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I UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. J. 



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GABOON STORIES, 



BY 



MES. J. S. PEESTON. 



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V 



AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 

150 NASSAU-STKEET, NEW YORK. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S72, by the 
Ameiucan Tract Society, in the Clerk's Olltice of the District Court 
of the United States for the Southern District of New York. 




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CHAPTEE I. 

INTO GABOON. 



Where is Gaboon ?— About the Equator — Gaboon a Eiver 
— Scenery at its Mouth — Sandy Point — Konig (King) 
Island — Parrot Island — French Frigate and Admiral- 
French Colony and Cathedral — Guard-ship — Native 
Villages and Factories — Mission-house in View — Novel 
Landing— Shaking Hands with Natives — "Mbolo" and 
**Mboloanii"— His Majesty King Glass — Nearer View 
of Baraka - - page 7 

CHAPTEE II. 

GABOON GIRLS. 

Who are Mpongwes? — Girls sewing — Who taught their 
Mothers to Sew — Earning Missionary Money — Sew and 
Chat — Mothers of Many — Eain Doctors — Pleasant 
Walks — V/ayside Chat — African Belle — Unreasonable 
Complaints 20 



4 CONTENTS. 

^ CHAPTEE III. 

FIVE LITTLE EECAPTIVES. 

Oshaka — Danger of going Fishing — Sold for Salt — Pale 
and Mbute — Learning to read Mpongwe — Repeating 
Verses at Morning Prayers — Beading Bible Stories for 
the First Time — Besetting the Printing-Office — Starch- 
ed Shirts and Dandies — Milking Cows 33 

CHAPTEE IV. 

GABOON GIRLS IN SCHOOL. 

Mission-School — Singing Hymns — Mi tombinP antya 
mam — Bible Questions— *' Peep of Day" in Mpongwe — 
Of What are yon made— I do n't know how to repent — 
Children Christians — In Chains for Christ — What a 
Scholar costs for One Year— Finery in Church 46 

CHAPTEE V. 

"MORE THAN TRUTH." 

Apparition — Driven from Town — A house in a barrel — 
Gradual Reformation— Ogiligili tries to make the Mis- 
sionary sick — Witchcraft — Missionary Lady defends the 
Witch—** The Dark Places of the Earth are full of the 
Habitations of Cruelty " - 59 

CHAPTEE VI. 

EXAMINATION AT PRINCE GLASS' VILLAGE. 

Examination of Native School— Dinner — Civilizing Effect 
of Mission Teaching — Courtship and Conquest — Chris- 
tian Marriages— Heathen Marriages — Employment of 
the Women— Need of the Gospel 68 



CONTENTS, 5 

CHAPTEE VII. 

MORE ABOUT SCHOOLGIRLS. 

How they live after leaving School — Hard to be Christians 
in Town — One of Mrs. Griswold's Scholars — Mrs. Gris- 
wold's Useful Life and Peaceful Death — Schoolgirls 
make Good Housekeepers — Kindness to Old Friends — 
*' Sisters of Charity," and their Schools — Fit for a Mis- 
sionary, fit for the President's Wife - 80 

CHAPTEE VIII. 

THE GOSPEL AMONG THE LOWLY. 

Panyale — Slaves Freemen, and not Freedmen — Christians, 
and Ornaments ^ — Interesting Questions — Living as 
Christians, dying as Christians — Tornado and Terror — 
Eaganji's Questions — Panyale preaching to Pangwes — 
A Victim of War— Faithful Okota— A Church Ofacer-91 

CHAPTEE IX. 

TRAVELLING. 

How We go by Water — Banks of the River, and Tropical 
Vegetation — Oysters growing on Trees— Hard Trip — 
Forty Hours, Sixty Miles — Native Kindness to Lone 
Ladies — Hammock Travelling — African "Cab" — Why 
We have no Horses 102 

CHAPTEE X. 

LEARNING BARBAROUS LANQUAGES 

It must be done — Laughable Mistake — Character of the 
Language — Had a Few Books to begin with — Best Way 
to learn a Language — Dialects Numerous — Preaching 



e CONTENTS. 

tliroiigh an Interpreter — "That's a Lie" — Kemedy for 
Long Sermons 112 

CHAPTER XI. 

INSECTS, REPTILES, AND ANIMALS. 

Seldom Troublesome except Ants — A Snake stampedes a 
School — White Ants — "Drivers " — Monkeys — Telinga — 
Gorilla — Jacko and his Frolics — Young Gorilla easily 
Tamed — Leopard — Elephant— Bush-Cat (Civet) — Birds 
— Eice-Birds — Parrots - 125 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE FOOD WE ATE. 

Plantains, and What they are like — Sweet Potatoes — 
Yams — Ind ian Corn— Eice — Br ead-Fruit— Meat — Chick- 
ens — Fish — Mutton — Cows — What our Children Ate — 
Cassada — How to ask for Food — Fruits — Pineapples — 
Oranges — Limes — Bananas — Mangoe — Guava — Grana- 
dilla — Sweet and Sour Sops 140 

CHAPTER XIII. 

LAST TALK. 

Only Pleasant Memories of Gaboon — Nengenenge — Sow- 
ing and Eeaping — Too Good to be True — Harvest come 
at Length — Triumphant Death of Adams — Death of Mr. 
Herrick — Two Graves at Nengenenge — The Author's 
Wish .. 149 




GABOON STORIES. 



CHAPTEE I. 



INTO GABOON. 




OW, aiinty Jane, we are 
all here together, ready 
to hear the stories about your 
little African children that you 
promised to tell us.'' 
It was my oldest niece, Etta, who 
spoke. She was nine years old. Her 
cousin Walter, aged ten, was visiting 
her with his two little sisters. Etta had 
also two brothers and a sister, youn- 



8 GABOON STOKIES. 

ger than herself; so that it was quite a 
little group of bright faces that gathered 
around me on the shady porch one pleas- 
ant summer afternoon. 

*' Oh yes, my dear children, it is so 
bright and sunny to-day, that I could 
almost fancy myself back in my African 
home. Now where shall we begin ?'^ 

''Why, aunty,'' said Etta, ''please 
explain to us just where your home was. 
Was it 'where Afric's sunny fountains 
roll down their golden sands'?'' 

"Not exactly. There has not been 
much gold found at Gaboon. I have 
seen women washing the sands for gold 
at Cape Coast, one thousand miles north- 
west of Gaboon. They take the sand, 
where the water from the gutters of the 
streets runs down into the sea, in a cal- 
abash, and wading into the sea, fill the 
calabash with water ; then with a whirl- 
ing motion they flirt the muddy water 



INTO GABOON. 9 

and sand over the edge, and the gold, if 
any, is left at the bottom of the cala- 
bash. If at first they don't succeed, 
they ' try, try again.' '' 

''Aunty,'' said Walter, ''one of the 
boys at school, when he was vexed with 
me, told me to go to Guinea ! And I 
answered him, ' Yery well, I would like 
to do it, for Guinea is a pleasant coun- 
try, and my aunt Jane lives there.' 
Was that so ?" 

" Yes, my boy. The Gaboon river is 
in Southern Guinea, just where the equa- 
tor on your map cuts into the western 
coast. You can find it on most of the 
maps of Africa. It is not a very long 
river, but it is so wide the first twenty- 
five miles from the mouth as to be really 
an arm of the sea." 

"Did you ever see the equator?*' said 
Emma. 

" No, I never saw that imaginary line, 
2 



10 GABOON STORIES. 

though I have crossed it many times. 
The mouth of the Gaboon is north of the 
equator. The river flows from the south- 
east, and crosses the line at a place call- 
ed King George^s Town, twenty-six miles 
above Baraka, our seacoast station. 
Nengenenge, our station farthest inland, 
was sixty miles above Baraka. Of course, 
in passing from one station to the other, 
we would cross the line. 

''Now, my children, imagine your- 
selves on board a sailing-vessel, enter- 
ing this river fifteen miles wide at the 
mouth. As you have never seen a trop- 
ical country before, you will notice the 
deep green of the woods, the tall trees, 
some with w^ide-spreading branches, and 
some with no branches at all, towering 
to a great height, with their long leaves 
clustered at the top, and bending in 
graceful curves. These last are palm 
and cocoanut trees. But amid the end- 



INTO GABOON. 11 

less variety of size and shape, you will 
not see a single tree that you knew at 
home. Your vessel, after running for 
Sandy Point — a long, low cape just in- 
side the mouth of the river, on the south 
side — now tacks and heads for the north- 
ern shore, where all the foreign settle- 
ments are. Here the land is high and 
rolling. Up the river you see in the dis- 
tance two beautiful green islands. One of 
them, Konig, or King island — so named 
by the Dutch, who occupied it a long 
time ago — has a high hill, on the top of 
which is an old cannon, honeycombed 
with rust, the remains of their slave- 
trading station. The other is called 
Parrot island, because it is held by the 
parrots in countless numbers. 

'' The sky is very blue, and the air is 
so clear that far-distant objects are dis- 
tinctly seen ; but though there is a fine 
sea-breeze bearing the vessel swiftly 



12 GABOON STOEIES. 

along, 3^011 feel the sun beating power- 
fully through the awning, so that you 
must expect a headache if you remain 
on deck too long. 

''By this time jon are opposite the 
huge French steam -frigate, where the 
admiral of the French navy on the west 
coast of Africa has his headquarters. 
You are now in a French colony, and it 
becomes you to be very polite. But as 
the wind is fair, and the tide is going up 
the river, if your captain will lower his 
flag to the admiral three times in suc- 
cession, you can pass without stopping 
to pay your respects now. The admiral 
returns the salutation with once lower- 
ing his flag, and you pass on. Here 
you are in sight of the different foreign 
establishments. First, the French cath- 
olic mission, a large, white frame-house, 
a handsome cathedral built of stone, with 
its cross upon the top, bamboo dwellings 



INTO GABOON. 13 

of various sizes, and beautiful gardens 
with tropical fruits. Next above is the 
French colonial settlement. The white- 
washed government houses, dazzling 
your eyes in the bright sunlight, stores 
and warehouses, pleasant cottages and 
bamboo hamlets, all mixed together. 
We are now abreast of the guard ship 
stationed at this settlement, and your 
captain must 'back his sails, ^ and send 
a boat with the ship^s papers to the pre- 
siding officer ; but this will not detain 
us long, and we pass on swiftly through 
the French shipping — steamers, sailing- 
vessels, and little boats. Then on up 
the river, passing here bamboo villages, 
there a German trading-house, or ' fac- 
tory,' as trading-houses are called here ; 
now more bamboo villages, then English 
and American factories, indicated by the 
flags of their respective countries, then 
more native villages. Now look back 



14 GABOON STORIES. 

upon those liills gently rising from the 
river, and you will see Baraka, the 
American mission station, just one hun- 
dred and fifty feet above the level of the 
sea. You can easily distinguish the 
principal mission house, as it is a white 
frame building with green shutters, and 
a wide porch in front. The storehouse, 
too, of galvanized iron, glistens in the 
sunlight. The church, schoolhouse, and 
other buildings, are of bamboo. How 
shady and pleasant they look embow- 
ered in the large trees. Well, we will 
soon be there. Your vessel now casts 
anchor right opposite to the mission- 
house, in the smooth waters of the Ga- 
boon, a welcome harbor to sailors on the 
African coast, for at many other ports 
the anchorage is in the rough, open sea, 
where the huge waves cause the vessel 
to roll very badlj^ 

''And now you are impatient to set 



INTO GABOON. 15 

foot on the shores of Africa, and there 
is the mission boat already pushing off 
from the beach. You can see the mis- 
sionary with an umbrella over his head, 
steering, and the young men and larger 
schoolboys rowing. Ah, how glad they 
all are to welcome friends from America. 
Joyful greetings exchanged, you descend 
the ship^s ladder into the boat, and in a 
little while its keel touches the sand. 
But unless the tide is quite full, the boat 
cannot come close to the shore, and you 
must let the men carry you, much as one 
would carry a baby, a little way through 
the shallow water. Do not draw back 
or hesitate. I never knew them to let - 
any one fall. 

'' Now you are all safe upon the hard, 
smooth beach. Oh, how the people 
crowd around. You are now in heathen 
Africa! But as you have not already 
seen natives at other points on the coast, 



16 GABOON STORIES. 

I can tell you that these people are bet- 
ter dressed and less boisterous than al- 
most any other tribe in West Africa. 
They are all very glad to see you. Do 
not shrink from touching their proffered 
hands. They will be satisfied with a 
very gentle shake. How confusing ! all 
talking and laughing. But if you could 
understand them you would blush, for 
they are praising you. ' So handsome!' 
they say ; ' so prettily dressed ! so grace- 
ful!' ' Oh, what a fine people the Amer- 
icans are.' I hope you have already 
learned their salutation, and can respond 
to their 'Mbolo,' (singular,) 'Mboloanli,' 
(plural,) which means, ' May jon live to 
be old.' But we must hasten forward. 
We are now at one end of a long bam- 
boo village, which extends back from the 
beach towards the mission station. The 
houses are built close together on each 
side of a single, wide, clean street. We 



INTO GABOON. 17 

pass right through the middle. No dan- 
ger of being run over by carriages or 
horses. The people all come out to look 
at the strangers. You can bow and 
smile in reply to their eager salutations, 
but we cannot stop except for a moment 
at the king's house. This is it, higher 
than the others, with the end towards 
the street. And here is his majesty, 
seated in a chair on the porch, dressed 
in a cloth coat and 'stove-pipe' hat, and 
having a long staff or spear in his hand. 
You must all be introduced to him. He 
will accost you in very broken English, 
but yon must be polite enough to appear 
to understand him, for he thinks it is 
perfect. King Glass complimented Mr. 

P after he had been preaching in 

Mpongwe some months, b}^ sajang that 
he spoke the native language a/mo^?! as 
well as he himself spoke English. But 
bere we come in sight of the mission 



18 ' GABOON STORIES. 

buildings. Ah, now things look a little 
more like home. This close, dark hedge 
of lime-bushes, ever green, and like an 
Osage orange hedge in summer, sur- 
rounding the whole premises, looks as if 
we were coming into a region of taste 
and skill. The houses, something like 
American cottages, the neatly-dressed 
school -children, the pale-faced ladies 
hastening to welcome you, make you feel 
that it is not wholly a heathen land upon 
which you have entered. Now we are 
within the house. It is home-like, and 
yet so strange ! The furniture is Ameri- 
can, but the curiously-woven mats upon 
the floor look so odd, and overhead, un- 
finished and open quite up to the rafters, 
like a barn, how queer it looks !^' 

'' But why need you have it so?'^ ask- 
ed Walter. '' Why did you not have a 
smooth ceiling, and a garret above ?^^ 

**It is cooler the way I have descri- 



INTO GABOON. 19 

bed, and we can keep down the insects 
and reptiles better by sweeping down 
the roof and walls often on the inside. 
And yet insects were often falling from 
the roof. A lady once asked, '' Whj are 
you so stylish as to have curtains around 
your beds ?'^ Principally, we told her, 
''to keep lizards and centipedes from 
dropping upon us when we are asleep.^' 

''Ugh, aunty, what a dreadful coun- 
try! How can you call it pleasant?'^ 
said Emma. 

'' But the lizards are harmless, and the 
centipedes are not numerous, and you 
have no idea how soon one gets accus- 
tomed to such annoyances. Now v/e 
have talked enough for once. I will in- 
troduce you to the school-children to- 
morrow.'^ 




CHAPTEE II 



GABOON GIRLS. 




OW, auntj/' said Etta, as 
my little group gathered 
around me, '' let us hear about 
your little girls to-day. You 
know ladies are waited on be- 
fore the gentlemen.'^ 

"That is not African custom at all, 
my child. "Woman's rights are not much 
discussed among the Mpongwes.'' 

''AVho are the Mpongwes ?^' asked lit- 
tle George. 

''The Mpongwes are the tribe living 
nearest the sea, at G aboon. They also ex- 
tend down the coast one hundred miles. 



GABOON GIRLS. 21 

The Mpongwe language is the one we 
first learned at Gaboon. But we will 
call up our little girls for sewing. They 
spend two hours in sewing, four after- 
noons in a week. Imagine from twelve 
to twenty, brown-skinned, bright-eyed 
little girls, seated upon the benches in 
the reception-room at the mission-house, 
each industriously stitching at a pair of 
pantaloons, a shirt, dress, or apron.'' 

''Did they sew as well as we do?'' 
asked Emma. 

"I will tell you about their sewing, 
and you can judge. Even the little girls 
quickly learned to hold a needle in our 
way. Their mothers in town learned 
sewing from sailors, and push the needle 
from them as sailors do in sewing thick, 
heavy sail-cloth. You would be sur- 
prised to see how quickly and neatly a 
little girl could stitch the seams in the 
boys' clothes. Some of their stitching 



22 GABOON STORIES. 

was as neat as the work of a sewing-ma- 
cliine. A girl twelve years old would 
often make a small pair of cotton panta- 
loons in one afternoon, even to the but- 
tonholes. Thev did not like so well to 
sew for the tall boys, as they could not 
finish a garment in one day. Our girls 
did all their own s.ewing, and that of 
from fourteen to twenty boys, besides 
sewing for people in the tovv^ns, and thus 
earning missionary-money.'^ 

''Why, what could they do with 
missionary-money ?'' asked Emma. ''I 
thought our pennies went to them.'' 

''So they do; but while our scholars 
were learning, they were doing a little 
to send teachers to others. They con- 
tributed money for the support of native 
helpers at Nengenenge and other out- 
stations. They helped to build one 
church and schoolhouse with their earn- 
ings. They took stock 'in each of the 



GABOON GIRLS. 23 

missionary-vessels that have gone to 
Micronesia, and were as much interest- 
ed in hearing of the 'Morning Star,' as 
you were. The older girls contributed 
about twenty cents each month at month- 
ly concert. The younger ones less.'' 

" They highly enjoyed their afternoon 
sewing, because they were not kept so 
still as in the schoolroom. While their 
needles were flying, they would tell 
funny stories, with a great deal of ges- 
ture, or discuss some town gossip, which 
reached them in some unaccountable 
way, or they would talk to one another 
in a sly way of what they would like to 
have the missionary ' Mamma ' do for 
them ; for the missionary ladies, and 
indeed all white ladies, married or sin- 
gle, were called 'Mamma' by the na- 
tives; so that we were claimed as moth- 
ers by many old people, as well as chil- 
dren. While I was busy with my bast- 



24 GABOON STOKIES. 

ing\ I would bear the girls discussing 
which of them would probably get that 
pretty muslin dress mamma was wear- 
ing, and wondering if she was not almost 
ready to give it up ; or wishing that 
some one would give them a bunch of 
that new style of red beads, so that they 
could learn to make a necklace such as 
Mrs. Sunia wore to church last Sab- 
bath/' 

"But could they do their work well 
while talking so much?'' -asked little 
May. 

''The work was all made ready the 
evening before, and they could not eas- 
ily mistake. They sometimes had big 
stitches to pick out. I wished them to 
talk freely, because I could learn a great 
deal of their language and customs by 
listening to them. But we were often 
shocked in overhearing their conversa- 
tion, to find that girls for whom we had 



GABOON GIKLS. 25 

long hoped and prayed, and who had 
learned much about the blessed Saviour, 
were still very ignorant, and regarded 
more the heathenish customs of their pa- 
rents, than all the teachings of the Bi- 
ble. 

'' Mrs. B once promised her girls 

that she would take them to walk along 
the beach to the plateau — or French set- 
tlement — two miles below, if the after- 
noon was pleasant. However, it began 
to rain. But these poor girls were not 
willing to give up their walk, and 
thought they could make a fetish, or 
medicine, that would stop the rain, as 

people tried to do in town. Mrs. B 

saw them passing sl^dy behind the 
house, with a kettle of boiling water, 
and found out what they were doing. I 
do not know how they expected to do it, 
but probably they intended to steep 

some herbs, and mumble words over it. 
4 



26 GABOON STORIES. 

People in town sometimes took a leaf of 
the taro, (a plant with a leaf like that of 
the water lily, the large, oblong root of 
which is boiled for food,) and setting it 
up in the sand, sprinkled ashes over it. 
Sometimes they took an iron pot, turned 
it down-side up, and sprinkled ashes 
over it. This they called medicine, and 
thought it would stop a hard rain. I 
have seen a man blowing a whistle with 
all his might, in a heavy shower, but 
the louder he whistled, the harder it 
seemed to rain. How foolish ! you will 
say. But we should be just as foolish, 
if we had not the Bible to teach us the 
power of God. And I have very often 
heard white sailors, while at sea, whistle 

to raise the wind. Mr. W once, 

when going home, was whistling softly 
to himself in the cabin, and the mate on 
deck called down to him through the 
skylight, to know ' what upon earth he 



GABOON GIELS. 27 

meant by whistling, for the wind was 
blowing half a gale already, and they 
must take in sail soon.' Of course he 
stopped at once. 

''You may be sure we felt very sorry 
to find that our girls, after all the in- 
struction they had received, did not be- 
lieve that God alone made it rain. But 
I am glad to say that these very same 
girls, who grieved us so at that time, 
have since, as they hope, given their 
hearts to Jesus; are consistent church 
members, and a great help to their 
teacher. '' 

"Aunty, could you take pleasant 
walks with your girls V^ asked Emma. 

''Oh, yes, indeed; I often went with 
them upon the hills, covered with grass, 
back of the mission-house, where they 
could run and jump, and laugh and talk 
as much as they pleased, and disturb no 
one. But they liked best to walk upon 



28 GABOON STOIUES. 

the boacli at low tide. I usually chose 
the most quiet path through the woods, 
not taking them through a large village 
if I could avoid it, for they w^ere sure to 
hear and see something that did them 
harm. We often took a basket with us, 
gathering ferns and flowers as we went, 
and on reaching the river, the girls 
quickly scattered along the beach, in 
search of shells and seaweed, while I 
seated myself on a log or broken canoe 
to watch them. It was a pleasant place 
when the sun was low and the cool 
breeze came in from the sea. The river, 
eight miles wide, was before us ; we 
could just see the low shore of the oppo- 
site side. Beautifnl green islands were 
in sight up the river, and towards the 
sea, English and French vessels, great 
steamers, and little boats ; and beyond 
was the great Atlantic, whose western 
waves five thousand miles awaj^ broke 



GABOON GIPwLS. 29 

on the shores of the land we love so 
well. 

''While I sat there, groups of poor 
women would pass, with heavy laden 
baskets upon their backs, supported by 
a strap passing around the forehead. 
They walked with a long staff to support 
themselves. They had been working 
all day on the plantations, and were 
coming home with food. They had yet 
to cook for their husbands and sons, not 
eating themselves till they had finished. 
Poor tired women ! I could only salute 
them pleasantly and let them pass on. 
But here comes a woman dressed in a 
gaudy red cloth, a silk handkerchief 
over her shoulders, her hair cushioned 
and padded and braided as elaboratel}^ 
as that of a Broadway belle. She has 
heavy brass and copper rings on her 
limbs, reaching from her ankles to her 
knees, making her walk as little Freddy 



30 GABOON STORIES. 

would, if he had on papa^s boots. She 
thinks her gait is graceful and dignified. 
They laughed at my swift pace, saying 
it was not lady-like to be in such haste. 
As she comes near enough to recognize 
the girls, she is sure to call one of them, 
to whom she claims to be aunt, or sister, 
or mother. I invite her to sit down by 
me while she talks with the child. She 
will begin with loud exclamations at the 
little girl being so thin ! ' You do not 
give her enough to eat ! See, there is a 
sore on her arm ; let her go home with 
me and stay four days, while I cure her.' 
*I refuse, as politely as possible, and she 
goes on to say: 'Those large girls coax 
away the food of the little ones, and they 
take it without coaxing too. See that 
child ^ — pointing to one who is growing 
slender and tall — 'she is only a skull set 
on the end of a stick. We do not wish 
our children to go to school and pine 



GABOON GIIILS. 31 

away like that.' I pacify her as well as 
I can, inviting her to come and see the 
girls at their meals, and asking her if the 
Mpongwe idea of beauty is to have girls 
grow up the shape of a barrel. '^ 

'' But did the big girls eat the food of 
the little ones V 

'' I discovered that they had once done 
so ; and quite likely they did, when I 
never knew it, for the younger ones 
never dared complain of the older ones. 
Our children were certainly greedy. All 
the natives think and talk a great deal 
about their food. I was as much tried 
b}^ this, as b}^ some of their greater 
faults. If a sheep were on hand in the 
mission, waiting to be killed for food, 
the children, as they did their own cook- 
ing, discussed the coming event for days 
beforehand, and planned all manner of 
ways in which their portion of the feast 
should be cooked. They had a great 



32 



GABOON STORIES. 



craving for meat. I never knew a little 
African girl to put her fingers in my su- 
gar-bowl, or take any sweet food. The}^ 
did not care for candy, as white children 
do. But fresh meat, and fresh fish were 
as great a temptation to them as to 
Pussy. 

'' But it is time to call in my band of 
girls from the water-side, or they will be 
late with their supper. And I think 
your mamma wants her little flock too.'' 





CHAPTER III. 




FIVE LITTLE RECAPTIVES. 

OW, aunty /^ said little 
George, "it is our turn to- 
day. Wont you tell us stories 
about boys? You did have boys 
in your school, did n't you V' 
'' Oh, yes, I had a great many nice lit- 
tle boys at diflferent times. The boys 
and girls have each their own school, 
and live in separate families a few rods 
apart, so that I cannot well talk of both 
schools at the same time. 

''I will tell you to-day of five little 
boys who had been sold into slavery, 
and afterwards came to live with us. 



Giiboon Stoiies, 



34 GABOON STORIES. 

They did not like to speak of the time 
when they were slaves, for the older 
children, I am sorry to say, were some- 
times naughty enough to look down upon 
them. To call one another ' oshaka,' or 
slave, was to be very abusive. I ques- 
tioned these little boys, but only Eeten- 
lo, the youngest, a boy five years old, 
would tell me anything about his home 
and mother. He said he was out play- 
ing in the street one day, but a little 
way from the house where his mother 
and baby sister were, when two strange 
men passed with a fishing net, and asked 
him to go a fishing with them, and he 
should have some fish for his mother. 
They all like to eat fish, and some ol 
them do not taste it often ; so little Re- 
tenlo started off in great glee, without 
going back to ask his mother's leave. 
The wicked men took him in their canoe 
right down the river to a Soanish tra- 



FIVE LITTLE KECAPTIVES. 35 

ding-bouse, and sold him for a quantity 
of salt. The little boy never saw his 
mother again. An American captain at 
that place, Kama, contrived to redeem 
five bright little boys from slavery by 
paying money to their owners ; and soon 
afterwards they were placed under the 
care of the mission. 

"There were also two little girls in 
the mission who had been rescued from 
slavery. Why they were first sold, I 
do not know ; but they had been bought 
by Portuguese from St. Thomas, an isl- 
and in the Atlantic about one hundred 
and fifty miles west of Gaboon. They, 
with other slaves, were being taken from 
near Cape Lopez, in an open boat, across 
to the island ; but in a storm their mas- 
ters had been driven out of their course, 
and not having any compass, had lost 
their way, and did not know the direc- 
tion to their island home. After many 



36 GABOON STOillES. 

days sailing here and there in vain, their 
food and water were all gone. Just then 
an American captain fell in with them as 
he was going down south along the coast, 
but out of sight of land. He gave them 
food and water, and told them which way 
to steer to find St. Thomas. Then, as 
he looked down from his vessel into their 
little boat, he saw these two little girls 
among the other slaves, and pitied them. 
He pitied them all, but he had no power 
to take them awa}^ from their cruel mas- 
ters. An idea struck him. ' I will make 
these men give me those little girls in 
pay for the food and water I have given 
them^ and take them to Gaboon to my 
friends, the missionaries.' Thus Pale and 
Mbute were rescued. They were known 
as Polly and Julia. They were educa- 
ted in the mission, and were married to 
husbands of their choice in a Christian 
manner. 



FIVE LITTLE RECAPTIVES. 37 

" Bat to return to the jfive boys. They 
learned fast. In six weeks after they 
came they were reading easy words, and 
in three months they were learning short 
verses in the Mpongwe Gospel of St. 
John. The reason they could learn to 
read their own language so soon, was 
that the spelling is so much more simple 
than it is in English. In the Mpongwe 
each letter has only one sound, and there 
are no silent letters to puzzle. After 
the names and powers of the letters are 
learned, the spelling is a sure guide to 
the pronunciation, and the pronuncia- 
tion is a guide to the spelling. You do 
not have to remember both the spelling 
and the pronunciation, each independent 
of the other. Thus if the number eight 
were pronounced to be spelled by Ee- 
tenlo, he would at once say e t (e having 
the sound or power of ey in they) instead 
of e i g h t. 



38 GABOON STORIES. 

'* These bojs were full of fun and play, 
and did not like the effort of learning 
verses at first. They learned one every 
evening to repeat at morning worship, 
though Retenlo w^as a long time on one 
verse, repeating it gravely every morn- 
ing as if it were the first time. On Sab- 
hath morning they reviewed the seven 
verses to repeat in Sabbath-school. It 
was a pleasant sight to see our hojs on 
the front porch, in their clean striped 
shirts and blue pantaloons, studying their 
Sabbath-school lessons. The older boys 
recited in Psalms or in Proverbs, the 
younger ones were in the gospels. Reten- 
lo and his little mates studied two verses, 
came and recited them, then two more, 
and so on, till they had finished the sev- 
en. It was funny to see little Maruga 
lying on his back, kicking up his heels, 
and groaning over his task. ' Oh, these 
verses will be the death of me yet !' I 



FIVE LITTLE RECAPTIVES. 39 

heard him say. But when they came to 
read the Bible stories around the table 
in my room, they liked it better. You, 
dear children, cannot remember when 
you first heard these beautiful stories ; 
but they were entirely new to our boys, 
till they learned to read in the mission- 
school. And they were as real to them 
as though they had just happened. I 
remember their reading of Jacob and 
Esau ; how Jacob deceived his father and 
obtained the blessing ; how Esau in his 
anger said, ' When my father is dead I 
will kill my brother Jacob. ^ ' Yes,' the 
boys spoke up with flashing eyes, ' Esau 
was right; Jacob ought to have been 
killed.' You see they had not learned 
to act on the dear Saviour's teachings, 
' Do good lo them that hate you.' When 
they came to the story of Joseph, they 
knew just how he felt when he was sold 
by his brothers. When they read of his 



40 GABOON STOIIIES. 

being made governor over all the land 
of Egypt, and of his brothers coming to 
him to buj^corn, they clapped their hands 
in delight. ' Oh, you fine fellows/ they 
exclaimed, ' where is all the money you 
got from the sale of jonv brother? It 
don't help you now.' 

'' This part of the Bible w^as translated 
into Mpongwe, so that they understood 
it very well. 

" At this time Mr. P was printing 

the Gospel of St. Luke in Mpongwe, and 
the boys sat on the steps of the printing- 
office watching the process with great 
interest, and when the corrected proof- 
sheets were thrown into the waste-bas- 
ket, they eagerl}^ caught them, and 
would not leave the place till they had 
read every word. Then the}" brouglit 
the sheets to me with all their mistakes 
and corrections on them, saying, * Mam- 
ma, do sew them into little books for us.' 



FIVE LITTLE IlECAPTIVES. 41 

I said, 'These are not worth sewing. 
You shall have better ones when the 
printing is done.' When they came to 
the book of Revelation in the English 
Testament, they were full of wonder at 
St. John's visions of heaven. ' Mamma, 

do ask Mr. P to translate this so 

that we can understand it better,' ihej 
said." 

''Aunty, I should suppose boys that 
did not like to learn verses would not 
have been fond of work," said Walter. 

"That is true, they were not. It was 
as hard for them to apply themselves to 
work as for some little white boys I could 
mention. I have seen Retenlo sit on the 
ground with a short native broom in his 
hand, crj^ing over the large space of the 
back yard that was portioned out to him 
to clean up ; and when the wind blew 
the leaves from the next upon his sec- 
tion, he gravely picked them up and 

6 



42 GABOON STORIES. 

carried them back, lest he should do 
more than his own share. 

'' Our boys washed their own clothes 
Monday mornings, getting through before 
school time, as they had not many chan- 
ges. But my little fellows grumbled at 
the small piece of soap furnished them, 
as it obliged them to expend more 
strength in rubbing than they liked. 
Then they asked whj^ they could net 
have their shirts starched, as they saw 

the large girls starching Mr. P 's. As 

they had never worn shirts at all till 
they came to the mission, it amused my 
little washwomen to see what dandies 
they had quickly become, and how rap- 
idly they advanced in civilization and 
refinement. 

'^ While the girls were sewing in the 
afternoon, the boys were gardening, fence- 
making, house-building, etc. No matter 
how young a child was, there was al- 



FIVE LITTLE RECAPTIVES. 43 

ways suitable workfor him, to teach him 
to be industrious. Our larger boys, 
under the superintendence of the mis- 
sionaries, built the whole of their pres- 
ent schoolhouse, and did half the work 
of building the church, which is a fine 
large bamboo house. 

'' It was a part of Maruga's work to 
milk the cow morning and evening. Our 
cows in Africa are about half as large 
as a common American cow, and give, 
with the help of the calf to cause her to 
' let down ' her milk, about a quart at a 
milking^. Marua;a had a small house, 
into which he drove the cow before milk- 
ing. In one corner was a post, to which, 
with a rope, he drew up and fastened 
the cow's head ; in the opposite corner 
^inother post, to which the cow's right 
leg was made fast. Then with a smaller 
boy to hold Suky's tail, he was readj to 
begin stripping the teats, which are only 



44 GABOON STOUIES 

an inch long. The whole process was 
interspersed with much talking in Mpon- 
gwe, reasoning and scolding, when the 
poor cow grew impatient at the confine- 
ment. A curious thing about these cows 
was, that we could keep them giving 
milk no longer than the calf was allowed 
to take a share at each milking/^ 

''What has become of those little 
boys V^ asked Freddy. 

'*Four of the five boj^s are still in 
school. It was during the latter part of 
my life in Africa that they came to us, 

and they are still young. Mrs. W 

writes me that they are faithful, good 
boys, and a great help. Eetenlo and 
Maruga sent me nice letters lately, tell- 
ing me that they loved to praj^ and tried 
to serve Jesus. I hope they will indeed 
become his children. The fifth boy, 
Njambia, got tired of school and work, 
and thought he would have an easier time 



FIVE LITTLE EECAPTIVES. 



45 



by running away. But we fear lie has 
been caught and reduced to slavery. He 
could scarcely fare otherwise, if he left 
the protection of the mission. We must 
pray for him. that, like the prodigal son, 
he may come to himself and return to 
his Father's house.'' 





CHAPTEE IV. 




GABOON GIRLS IN SCHOOL. 

'ELL, aunty, here we are 
again to listen to more stor- 
ies about the little Africans/' 
said Etta. "We have not 
heard j^et about the children 
in school.'' 

"To be sure, and you save your pen- 
nies too, to help support mission-schools. 
But our children were boarding scholars, 
and were really in school all the time, 
that is, while they were sewing and 
washing, at morning and evening wor- 
ship, in the house and by the way, when 



GABOON GIRLS IN SCHOOL. 47 

they lay down and when they arose, 
their education was going on. But their 
regular hours in the school-room were 
from nine o'clock till one. I will tell 
you of the girls' school. The boys' 
school was much the same. Their 
school-house at the Baraka station was 
in a pleasant, shady yard, back of one 
of the mission buildings, where the girls 
would not be diverted from their les- 
sons by passers-by in the street. At the 
ringing of the bell at nine o'clock, they 
were promptly seated, with clean hands 
and faces, their dresses rather clean 
toOj even as late in the week as Fri- 
day and -Saturday. Our girls, all but 
the very youngest, did their own wash- 
ing and ironing, and it made them care- 
ful of their clothes. The first exercise 
was calling the roll. Then thej^ sang a 
hymn translated into their own language. 
The hymns were few, as Mpongwe words 



48 GABOON STORIES. 

are so long it is difficult to cramp them 
into our metres. A favorite with them 
was a translation of the psalm, ' Upward 
I lift mine eyes/ which they sang very 
well to the tune Lenox. In Mpongwe 
the first verse was : 

*^ ' Mi tombinl' antya mam, 

Gore Anayambie, 
Yi panginl' orowa, 

Mi ntje nl'eliva ta ; 
Mi syambunla gw'ampavi me, 

Awang' ezam' eclu eve.' 

''Singing was followed by reading the 
Scriptures and prayer by the teacher, 
finishing with the Lord's prayer in 
Mpongwe repeated in concert by the 
school. Next came reading-classes in 
the English Bible, Testament, and the 
Mpongwe Scriptures. We made great 
use of the Bible in the day-school, so 
that the children were apt to use Bible 
words when they attempted to speak 
English. For instance, a child came in 
covered with mud, and when I inquired 



GABOON GIRLS IN SCHOOL. 49 

the cause, she began, 'And it came to 
pass,' and went on to tell of a crazy 
woman coming around the house, where 
natives were not allowed to go, and 
frightening her so that she ran towards 
the woods, and ' fell straightway into the 
swamp and was buried in the mud.' 
But to come back to the school-room. 
They often interrupt the reading-lessons 
to ask me questions which they think 
will puzzle me, such as, '"Was Solomon 
a good man, with all his wives?' and 
' Why do you eat pork, when the Bible 
forbids it?' and other questions, which 
you could not understand, unless I told 
you a great deal of the wicked customs 
of the people such as, ' What does this 
text mean, Thou shalt not suffer a witch 
to live ?' 

•'Beading lessons over, comes hard 
study; arithm.etic, geography, historj', 
spelling, writing, and compositions once 



^h.oo:}. S.torjiia, 



50 GABOON STORIES. 

a week. You would laugh at the trou- 
ble they have in pronouncing the hard 
names in geography, and to see them in 
mental arithmetic count their fingers, 
and. look down at their toes, as the}^ 
work out the problems. But it was 
pleasant to teach the little ones, and see 
how delighted they were with the sto- 
ries in their reading-books. The ' Peep 
of Day,' in Mpongwe, was the first book 
read after leaving the primer, and they 
passed from smiles to tears all the way 
through its beautiful stories. 

''We had a few day scholars — little 
girls who came from town to school, and 
went home at noon. They hoped to 
merit an article of clothing, by attend- 
ing punctually three months. But they 
seldom succeeded, as their mothers did 
not get breakfast in time, or they were 
kept at home to 4ake care of the baby, 
or they had nothing to wear, or their 



GABOON GIRLS IN SCHOOL. 51 

mothers thought study was making them 
thin, and took them away. While they 
did come, wo took pains to teach them 
Scripture texts and an easy catechism, 
so that they would make sure of a little 
truth. One little girl was learning the 
question, ' Of what are you made ?' An- 
swer, 'Of dust.' She shook her head, 
and could not be coaxed to say it, giv- 
ing as a reason, that it was not true in 
her case, for there was no dust in their 
town ; it was all hard clay. 

" The last exercise before closing 
school was a catechism of Scripture 
truth, recited in concert, follow^ed by 
some of the beautiful Sabbath-school 
songs you love so well. They preferred 
the soft melodious tunes to the more 

noisy ones. Mr. P lately attended 

a Sabbath-school exhibition in this coun- 
try, and he said the children did not 
sing as correctlv as our Gaboon airls. 



52 GABOON STOIUES. 

But tliey were sometimes tired, and im- 
patient for school to close. Their teach- 
er was once singing with them, ' Morning 
bells I love to hear/ when a little girl 
broke in with a loud voice, 'Dinner bells 
I love to hear/ This brought school 
quickly to a close. '^ 

''Do they learn as easily as white 
children?'^ asked Etta. 

*'Most of them did. There were dull 
ones, but generally our scholars were 
reading their own language in three 
months from the time the}^ commenced. 
As I told you in speaking of the little 
boys, every letter in Mpongwe has but 
one sound, and when they could spell 
words of three letters, they joined them 
into words of three or four syllables with 
very little teaching. It was not difficult 
for them to commit verses to memory. 
Our older girls have learned by heart 
most of the New Testament, also the 



GABOON GIRLS IN SCHOOL. 53 

Psalms, Proverbs, and other portions of 
the Bible. We often heard them quo- 
ting the precious words of our Saviour in 
his sermon on the mount, but it was to 
lay down the law of right to others, not 
to practise it themselves. 

" But there were times when they 
were awakened to feel their sinfulness, 
and led to ask how they might be saved. 
They wept over their sins, and rose at 
night to pray. One of them said to me, 
' I wish I had died when I was a baby; 
I do not know how to repent.' They 
had besetting sins to struggle against. 
One of the little ones said, ' Mamma, do ^ 
you know Maria is trying to be a Chris- 
tian? But she will not succeed until 
she leaves off teasing us children.' Ma- 
ria heard of this speech, and felt much 
reproved. We many times had reason 
to hope that our children were about to 
give their hearts to God, and for weeks 



54 GABOON STORIES. 

and months they appeared entirely- 
changed; but afterwards we would be 
nearly heart-broken to see them go back 
and behave worse than before. But 
there were steadfast ones, who we trust 
love Jesus with all their hearts, and de- 
light to obey his commands. You must 
remember that these children have not 
the help from their friends in doing right 
which you have. So long as we could 
keep them in school, it w^as compara- 
tively easy for them ; but their friends 
found excuses to take them away, and 
when they had once left us, it was only 
^ the power of God that could keep them 
from going back to heathenism. I knew 
a boy who was taken from school, and 
fastened with a chain around his neck to 
a post, to make him do what he knew 
was wrong. They threatened to whip 
him and sell him as a slave, but he was 
firm and did not give up for imprison- 



GABOON GIELS IN SCHOOL. 55 

ment and stripes. But the girls were 
wholly in the power of their parents and 
friends, and there are sad cases of girls 
being carried away screaming from 
school, and obliged to commence a life of 
heathenism and sin. 

''But I hope, my dear children, you 
have heard enough to show you that the 
pennies you contribute to mission-schools 
are put to good purpose. It takes now 
twenty dollars a year to support one of 
these boys or girls in school. It once 
required but fifteen, but the expenses of 
living have increased of late. This pays 
for their board and clothing.'' 

''How could you support them on so 
little V' asked Walter. 

"You know the climate is warm, and 
they do not need stockings and shoes. 
The girls looked very well in calico 
dresses, with one or two undergarments, 
according to their age. The boys wore 



56 GABOON STORIES. 

cotton shirts and pantaloons. The girls' 
bedding was simply native mats laid 
upon the floor. We let them make their 
own pillows, filling them with hay, or 
cotton from the cotton-wood tree, a large 
tree a little like the ash, which bears pods 
of cotton. Their mats, upon a smooth 
board floor, made more comfortable beds 
than the bamboo frames upon which 
they slept in town, and saved us much 
trouble from insects, which would have 
resulted from beds and bedsteads, how- 
ever simple. Once a girl brought me 
a verse of Dr. Watts' nursery hymn, 

** * Soft and easy is thy cradle, 

Coarse and hard thy Saviour lay, 
When his birtli-place was a stable, 
And his softest bed was hay. ' 

saying, ' We would think a bed of haj^ 
very nice.' I told her when she had a 
house of her own she could have a bed 
of hay if she chose, and many of them 
have since attained to that luxury. 



GABOON GIRLS IN SCHOOL. 57 

^' Our hojs and girls did much of the 
work of the mission families, and thus 
reduced the expense of their support. 
The. girls did our washing and their 
own, and did their own cooking. A 
school boy cooked for us. It took much 
of our time and strength to teach them 
to work, and see that they did it well. 
But this was part of their education. 
The natives felt far more anxious that 
the girls should learn to cut and make a 
shirt, and wash and iron it in good style, 
than they did that they should learn to 
read. Sometimes a girl was brought to 
us to stay till she had learned to do 
these things properly, and was taken 
away when it was found that she went 
to school and was learning to read.'' 

"Could not the natives clothe their own 
children, while in school?'' asked Etta. 

"Many of them were not able, and 

others had no disposition. A child usu- 
8 



58 GABOON STORIES. 

ally came . to us with simply a clotli 
around the waist, and in some cases they 
wished me to dress the child at once, 
and let them take the cloth back. But 
sometimes a rich native wished his 
daughter to make a display at church, 
and furnished her with very showy 
clothing. But the child did not enjoy 
being dressed differently from the other 
girls, and would beg to leave off her 
finery. The natives themselves were 
fond of dress, and to look at our Sab- 
bath congregations at Baraka, you would 
wonder where in their smoky houses 
they kept all their nice clothing. Silk 
dresses, French bonnets, flowers and 
embroidery among the women, and pol- 
, ished shoes and broadcloth suits among 
the men were often seen mingled with the 
the simple costumes of the poorer natives. 
The missionaries prayed that all might be 
clothed in Christ's righteousness.'' 




OHAPTEE V. 




'« MORE THAN TRUTH. 

>ERE comes my rosy, laugh- 
ing little flock again. I 
would be glad to tell you 
none but pleasant stories, but 
you will not know how to pity 
the heathen, or how to pray for them, if 
you do not hear something of their su- 
perstition and cruelty. 

''I will tell you to-day of a little slave 
who had a harder lot than the five little 
boys of whom you have heard. 

''It was the time when the smallpox 
was raging very badly among the Ga- 



60 GABOON STOPtlES. 

boon people. They hurried to the mis- 
sionaries to be vaccinated, and tried to 
keep the sick in houses by themselves. 
But the disease spread, and many died. 
We were all out on the porch at sunset, 
when a strange object came out from the 
shade of the large tree in front and beg- 
ged for food. It looked like a little skel- 
eton, with very large ej^es staring from 
the skull. It proved to be a boy seven 
or eight years old. We could not keep 
from crying at the sight. He said he had 
been driven out of tovm to die several 
days before, and was starving, which we 
could readily believe. Our cook had 

had the smallpox, and Mr. W sent 

him at once with food to the child, and 
afterwards with a barrel and a blanket, 
so that he could have a place to sleep.'' 

''What! sleep in a barrel?'' said my 
little auditors. 

^* Yes, he did sleep in it. It lay down 



"MORE THAN TllUTH." 63 

on its side, with one head out, and he 
drew himself up in it, folding up his legs, 
and was very comfortable with his blan- 
ket. You know it was not safe for him- 
to come among all the school-children, if 
he had the smallpox. After he had been 
well fed, Mr. W— — went to see him, 
and found that he had not the smallpox 
at all, but was covered with large sores 
from a disease called ' yaws.' He was 
then carefully washed, dressed in a loose 
gown, brought into the yard, and fur- 
nished with a comfortable bed by him- 
self. The poor child had fared so badly 
that he was very glad to sleep in a house 
again, even though he was all alone. Mr. 

W attended to him carefully, and 

soon his sores were so much better that 
he could sit on the back steps of the mis- 
sion house and eat his food. This made 
him perfectly happy. I do not suppose 
we could have made him believe that 



62 GABOON STOKIES. 

Heaven could furnish him anything bet- 
ter. His name was Ogih'gili Posyo, 
which means in Mpongwe, ' More thnn 
Truth/ 

'^The poor child^s life had been such 
a sad one that he could not give much 
account of himself. He remembered little 
but cuffs and kicks. He may have been 
stolen from his home like little Retenlo, 
or he may have been captured hj a war- 
party. He told about his wanderings 
after he was driven from the town ; how 
he used to go back at night and steal 
chickens and other food, take it to the 
beach, and hide it under an old boat that 
was turned upside down. Here this lit- 
tle child made a fire and cooked his food. 
He recounted his thefts very gravel}^ 
and said that now he had come to live 
at the mission, he had left off stealing, 
and after a while he intended to leave 
off lying. But he had many difficulties 



''MORE THAN TllUTII." 63 

with the other boys, and to tell the truth, 
they were not very kind to him. He 
had a great appetite, after being starved 
so ; for, with all his stealing, he must 
have gone hungry a great deal, to look 
as he did when we first saw him. 

'' Though he had plenty of good food, 
the boys often brought him up on the 
charge of stealing their fish. He would 
stoutly deny it, showing his open hands 
and open mouth, free from any smell of 
fish. Then the boys w^ould search and 
find the stolen food in his hiding-place 

under the house, and Mr. W would 

say, ' Poor child ! either jou are wrongly 
named, or Truth is fallen in the streets.' 

'' He could not be broken of eating all 
sorts of unwholesome food, and one da}^ 
dug up a dead chicken that had been 
thrown out and buried, and was quietly 
making a fricassee in Mrs. W-— — 's nice 
saucepan, when the cook discovered him. 



64 GABOON STORIES. 

Mr. W punished liim for this, and 

poor little Ogiligili Pos^^o must have 
been very angry at the loss of his nice 

dinner ! That same evening Mr. W 

was taken sick with a violent chill, so 
severe that the little boys gathered 
around in great alarm. Ogiligili Posyo 
told them that he had bewitched Mr. 

W and made him sick, in revenge 

for the loss of his dinner ; but he meant 
to * take the witch off,' as he expressed 

it, in four days, and then Mr. W 

would get well. 

'' Probabl}^ the child really thought he 
was responsible for Mr. W 's sick- 
ness. All the natives think that the 
slaves possess the power of witchcraft, 
and can cause sickness and death when 
they please. \Yhen any one is taken 
sick, or dies, even from an accident, or 
drowning, they inquire Avho has be- 
witched him, and some poor slave pays 



'*MORE THAN Tr.UTH." 65 

the penalty, either by being put to death 
or sold to the foreign slave-dealer. But 
four days passed, and two weeks passed. 

and Mr. TT was still very sick. The 

poor child was really distressed, and 
would look in upon him most pitifully. 

At length Mr. "W began to recover, 

and could talk with the child, and tell 
him how foolisli he had been. But 
whether the poor boy ever understood 
enough of the truth of the gospel to trust 
in the dear Saviour. T cannot say. He 
pined away not long after with a wast- 
ing disease, and died. 

"This is but one case : but throughout 
the land of Africa such poor little dis- 
tressed slave children are cruelly treat- 
ed, and if taken sick are cast out to die. 
Why are the people so hard-hearted ? 
Because they have not heard and be- 
lieved the precious words of our blessed 
Saviour. So you see how much they 
9 



66 GABOON STORIES. 

need the gospel and the missionary 
teacher, and more than all, the Holy 
Spirit to change their wicked hearts. 

''Not long before I left Africa, the 
quiet of a beautiful Sabbath morning 
was broken by a company with guns and 
spears chasing a poor slave, who ran 
into the mission house for protection . 
His pursuers came up the steps, but 
Mrs. W caught up a cane and dis- 
puted their entrance. Fierce and blood- 
thirsty as they were, they stood still, not 
offering to molest her.'^ 

''But was she not frightened? they 
might have shot her,'^ said George. 

"She said she did not think of being 
frightened. She only thought of pro- 
tecting the poor, terrified, hunted crea- 
ture who had taken refuge in her bed- 
room. Mr. W came out from his 

study, and found that it was a case of 
witchcraft. He protected the poor man 



MORE THAN TRUTH." 67 

for a time, and appealed to the French 
authorities to prevent farther pursuit, 
but the poor fellow was in constant fear 
for his life, and disappeared, we kaow 
not whither. He could be safe nowhere. 

''Mr. W has been the means of 

saving man}^ lives by reporting such 
cases to the French, but dreadful deeds 
of darkness v^ere often committed in se- 
crecy. I will not distress you by telling 
of the sad acts of cruelty that I have seen 
and known. But do not forget to pray 
that these cruel people may be brought 
to repentance. Some of the most earnest 
members of the church in Gaboon were 
once firm believers in witchcraft, and 
took part in condemning the poor vic- 
tims. The Holy Spirit moving upon their 
hearts, led them to repent of this great 
wickedness, and in this blessed Spirit, and 
the atoning blood of Christ, is all our hope 
for ourselves and the perishing heathen.'' 




CHAPTEK VI 



EXAMINATION AT PRINCE GLASS VIL- 
LAGE. 



^^ 0-DAY, my dear children, 
^ I will tell you of a visit I 




made to an out-station soon 
after I reached Gaboon. Mr. 
and Mrs. Wilson invited me to 
go with them to attend the examination 
of Mr. Dorsey's school at Prince Glass' 
village, two miles up the river. It was 
a pleasant row in the boat along the 
green banks, and we soon reached the 
place, and climbed the steep hill to the 
teacher's house. This is near what was 
formerly the Ozyunga mission station. 



EXAMINATION. 69 

where Mr. Griswold died in 1844. It 
commands a beautiful view of the river 
and sea. Indeed, all our stations ii 
Gaboon are very pleasantly situated. 

, *' On entering the schoolroom we found 
a number of natives assembled, seeming 
quite interested in the examination of 
thirty bright little boys and girls. Mr. 
Dorsey was a colored American ; but 
Mary, his wife, was a native of Cape 
Palmas, and had been educated in the 
mission. The children recited very well 
in the primary English studies, and then 
Mary examined her little girls in read- 
ing and spelling in Mpongwe, after which 
the whole school recited the Mpongwe 
Catechism in concert. At the close, Mr. 
Dorsey invited the visitors present to 
stay and take dinner. 

'' As Mary seemed tcf wish it very 
much, we stayed with the rest. We sat 
down at a Ions; table, with about twenty 



70 GABOON STORIES. 

natives,, some of them chiefs. The din- 
ner was of plantains, roasted and boiled, 
yams, sweet potatoes, rice, different 
kinds of fresh fish, besides salt beef and 
sea-biscuit from the mission store. Ev- 
erything was nicely cooked, and we 
enjoyed it as much as did the natives. 
When we had finished eating, two little 
boys quietly took away the plates, and 
brought on coffee and roasted peanuts. 
It was all managed very quietly, with- 
out mistakes or confusion, and Mary had 
done all the cooking herself, besides 
attending to the school. I felt that I 
needed to take a lesson from her. Mrs. 
Wilson came away quite proud of Mary. 
She said she did not think a Philadel- 
phia lady could have managed it bet- 
ter. 

''Several boys from that school have 
joined the mission church, and some of 
them have been teachers. 



EXAMINATION. 71 

*'Mary was afterwards left a widow 
with three children, and has since Tbe- 
come the wife of a wealthy merchant, 
has travelled much, and entertained for- 
eigners at her own house. She has al- 
w^ays been praised for her energy and 
good management. The feeble mission- 
ary ladies, with their many duties, can- 
not keep so neat a house as she does. 
She is an active church member, and 
has ever been a steady friend to the 
mission. Her oldest daughter is now 
assistant teacher in the girls' school, and 
is also a professing Christian.'' 

"But, aunty, keeping your girls as 
close as you did, I do not see how they 
ever got married,'' said Walter. 

''There was no trouble about that. 
There are no mammas more anxious in 
this country than we often were from 
the flirtations of our school-girls. I have 
seen the blushes through their brown 



72 GABOON STORIES. 

cheeks ^s I. picked up a stray note from 
some devoted youth. Some of these 
notes, too, were not very complimentar}^ 
as for instance : * You need not hold your 
head so high. You are as big and round 
as a barrel, and your foot is like a yam f 
something the shape of a tailor^s goose. 
On inquiry, I found this was called forth 
by the young lady having sent word to 
her suitor that he was as black as the 
bottom of the kettle, and that she would 
not eat from the same pot with him. I 
assure you, I was mortified to find that 
her ambition did not aspire to eating at 
a table in civilized style. But usually 
the first indication that one of my girls 
had made a conquest was seeing her 
making a shirt or cloth that did not 
come from my work-basket. It was 
more annoying to see a bundle of soiled 
shirts sent to a girl on washing-day, with 
a request that she do them up in good 



EXAMINATION. 73 

order. It being considered a great com- 
pliment to admit that a girl can wash 
and iron well. It was bard to teach the 
young men that it v.'as more politic for 
them to pay their addresses to us first, 
and that having gained our consent, the 
course of true love vfas more likely to 
run smooth. 

'' But generally our best girls, though 
they liked attention, were not in haste 
to marry, especially if they were to 
leave the mission. This was in great 
contrast to heathen practice, when all 
the girls were married very young.'' 

'' When vour mission girls were mar- 
ried, did you make a party for them, as 
people do here ?" asked Emma. 

'' Yes, something like it, as we wished 
to s-how the natives that we considered 
it a joyful occasion. The large recep- 
tion-room was decorated with flowers, 

the bride was neatly dressed, though 
10 



74 GABOON STORIES. 

she was usuall}^ quite shy at being fitted 
out with stockings and shoes — often it 
was the first occasion of her wearing 
them — and having her hair trimmed 
with flowers. The groom looked very 
well in his black coat and white panta- 
loons. The ceremony was in the native 
language, accompanied with advice to 
the couple, and concluded with prayer. 
Then followed congratulations, and the 
natives sometimes took the opportunity 
to give comical instructions to the young 
couple, which they had to accept as best 
they could. Then cake and lemonade 
were passed around, and the company 
went away early. 

''Not long before I left Gaboon there 
was a marriage in church, which we 
enjoyed tlie more as we had no care or 
trouble in the arrangements. The bride 
was the widow of one of our teachers. 
The groom, named Iveka, was a church- 



EXAMINATION. 75 

member, and had been a mission scholar 
years before. A large company came in 
procession to the church, the bride dress- 
ed in white with a veil, and flowers in 
her hair. The women in attendance 
wore flowers. After the ceremony the 
new couple led the way down the hill 
to the groom's neat bamboo cottage. 
There they entertained their friends in 
a quiet manner with cake and coffee. 
The groom was in the emploj^ of an Eng- 
lish merchant trading in Gaboon, who 
had sent a present of a hamper of wine, 
and expected to enjoy a frolic on the 
occasion ; but the wine was not opened 
at all. 

'' Iveka commenced family worship at 
once, and had weekly prayer-meetings 
at his house. I once called on this 
couple with a New York lady, the wife 
of a sea-captain. She was greatly pleased 
to see the house so neatly furnished. It 



76 GABOON 8T0KIES. 

had mats upon the floor, pictures upon 
the walls, chairs, a table covered with a 
ueat spread, with pitcher and tumblers 
upon it, and books upon the shelf. The 
bedroom, too, was neatly furnished, and 
the musquito netting was looped back at 
the head of the bed. Mrs. Yates said, 
as we came away, ' I could be very con- 
tented to live in such a house.' '^ 

''But how did the heathen marry 
among themselves V^ said Etta. 

" Oh, it w^as not marriage at all. They 
bought a Avife, as they bought a slave or 
a tusk of ivory. Generally she was but 
a child. They brought her home with 
shouting and firing of guns, and had 
rum-drinking and dancing all the next 
night. The child was put under the 
care of an older woman belonging to the 
same man, and required to obey her arud 
wait upon her, till she was old enough 
to do ns she plonsod. SomotiiiioQ n rlozon 



EXAMINATION. 77 

or more women lived together in this 
way, as the wives of one man, and they 
quarrelled a great deal/^ 

'' What could they find to do, so many 
of them together ?^^ asked Emma. 

''That w^as a question that did not 
trouble them much. They understood 
how to live easy. If you were to go 
into one of their houses, you would find 
some of them smoking, perhaps the young 
girls. You would see one woman with 
her head in the lap of another, having 
her hair braided. A head got up in 
good style took two or three hours. An- 
other would be stringing beads for neck- 
laces or belts. Another still, scraping 
the leaves of the pineapple to make 
thread. And another would be sewing, 
holding one end of the cloth between her 
toes, and pushing the needle from her as 
sailors do. They boast that they can 
sew up a seam faster than the girls can 



78 GABOON STOllIES. 

who have been taught by iis. The wom- 
en, too, do all the farming and garden- 
ing, assistod in some cases by slaves. 
This takes them away from the villages 
to the plantations for weeks at a time. 
But when they are together they spend 
a great deal of time in idle talk, in telling 
silly stories, and in disputing and quar- 
relling. Their husbands are often very 
unkind to them, sometimes beating them 
cruelly. It is a dreadful life to live. Xone 
need the gospel so much to make them 
happy and comfortable in this life as do 
the heathen women, and yet none are so 
slow to receive it. Their li^athen cus- 
toms have made their hearts harder even 
than those of the men. AYhen our schol- 
ars became Christians, their mothers 
made more opposition to it than their 
fathers. My dear little girls, you must 
remember that if we had not the Bible 
in this land, joii would be in quite as 



EXAMINATION. - 



79 



sad a case. Do not forget to thank God 
that you are in a Christian land, the 
children of Christian parents.- Is it not 
the very least you can do, to love God 
with all your hearts, when he has done 
so much for you V^ 





CHAPTEE VII. 



MORE ABOUT SCHOOLGIRLS. 




UNTY, did all your school- 
girls, when they grew up, live 
in nice houses like the one you 
told us of yesterday ?"' asked 
Etta. 

''Oh, no ; many of them went back to 
their heathen parents, and lived as they 
did. We often met them in the villages, 
and could always tell a schoolgirl, even 
if she were dressed like the rest, for she 
looked brighter and neater than other 
women. 



MORE ABOUT SCHOOLGIELS. 81 

' When I was living at Nengenenge, 
sixty miles from the girls^ school at Ba- 
raka, I saw a woman who had been in 
Mrs. GriswolcVs school before I went to 
Africa. She was from King William's 
Town, on the south side of the G.aboon, 
and had come up the river with her hus- 
band on a trading tour. Mrs. Griswold 
had then been dead several years, but 
the tears rolled down the woman's cheeks 
as she talked with me and recalled her 
teachings. When I asked her why she 
did not give her heart to the Saviour, 
and be prepared to meet dear ' Mamma 
Griswold ' in heaven, she said, ' What 
can we poor women do, living in town? 
Our husbands would never allow us to 
change our customs. If I could go back 
to the mission, I could be good.' Of 
course I told her that the dear Saviour 
was just as near to her in town as in the 
mission, and was waiting to have her 

Gaboon Stoijes, H 



82 GABOON STORIES. 

love him and trust him. But it would 
have been veiy hard for her to live a 
Christian life in to^\n, if she had been in 
earnest to do so. 

''Still I have known cases, more of 
them at Corisco, forty miles to the north, 
than at Gaboon, of women living in town, 
crowded wath a number of others in the 
same house, and yet loving and serving 
Jesus. I felt, whenever I saw them, 
that there was no excuse for me, if I 
was ever impatient or forgetful of my 
duties, when these poor women could 
hold up such an example in the midst of 
heathenism. 

''But having spoken of Mrs. Grriswold, 
I must tell you what a beloved mission- 
ary she was. She died in 1849, five 
months after I reached Gaboon. I have 
always been thankful that I knew her 
even for a short time. Her husband 
died some time before, and her life was 



MORE ABOUT SCHOOLGIRLS. 83 

wholly devoted to the poor women and 
girls of Gaboon. The blessed Saviour 
was very near and precious to her, and 
she labored with all her strength, and 
beyond her strength, to lead poor peo- 
ple to love him. She worked too hard, 
teaching through the day, visiting the 
women afterwards, and meeting them on 
the Sabbath in their own villages. Those 
who knew her can never forget her ear- 
nest prayers and teachings. All the na- 
tives loved her, men, women, and chil- 
dren. I have seen her in the villages, 
when the noisy women stopped their dis- 
putes and gathered round her, eagerly 
catching every word that fell from her 
lips. Her last sickness was short. In 
two days after meeting her scholars, her 
j)oor girls were hanging over her dying- 
bed, hoping in vain for a word of fare- 
well. Her work on earth was done, and 
the dear Saviour she so much loved 



84 GABOON STOKIES. 

spared her the pain of parting. Peace- 
fully 'he gave his beloved sleep/ and 
her mourning pupils sang the sweet 
hymns she had taught them around her 
lifeless body, till it was buried from 
their sight. They planted flowers on 
her grave, and often went there to sing 
and pray. Some of them have, I trust, 
since met her in the 'better land,' and 
others, we hope, are on their way 
thither. 

'' But to speak again of the girls going 
out from our school. They dreaded 
leaving us for homes of their own, even 
when they were to live near by, and our 
brides often wore quite sober faces, some- 
times crying, during the ceremony. One 
widow of a native teacher, poor and de- 
pendent, living near us, and supporting 
herself and two little children by wash- 
ing, received an offer of marriage from a 
church-member, Awere bv name, who 



MORE ABOUT SCHOOLGIELS. 85 

lived in town. I took it for granted she 
would accept, as he was in good busi- 
ness. But she said, ' I will not take my 
children into town to live among those 
quarrelling, rum-drinking people.' I re- 
plied, ' Awere has just built a new house 
in town ; how can he afford to come and 
live near the mission?' 'He can if he 
wishes,' she said; 'he has friends who 
can help him move his house, and if he 
does not choose to do it, that settles the 
question.' " 

"Did you not have to show them how 
to keep their houses nice after they were 
married ?'' asked Emma. 

''Oh, yes, and often we could not 
praise their housekeeping. But they 
did so very much better than the hea- 
then women, that it was pleasant to go 
and see them. They showed themselves 
quite skilful in cutting and making their 
own clothes, after they left us, and they 



86 GABOON STORIES. 

did it quickl}^ too. Once Mr. W 

was sick, and found on Saturday morn- 
ing that he would not be able to preach 
on the coming Sabbath. He called in 
Akanda, one of the teachers, and gave 
him some suggestions about talking to 
the people in his place. But Akanda 
was in mourning for a brother who had 
just died, and his friends would not al- 
low him to appear in his usual Sunday- 
suit. So his wife, named Josephine, 
went to work after breakfast, and cut 
and made for her husband a shirt and a 
cloth in two breadths of dark blue ma- 
terial, such as they used for mourning, 
and Akanda stood in the pulpit the 
next day and gave us a very good ser- 
mon. 

'' Sometimes we were very sick, and 
these women, whom we had trained, left 
their own children and homes and came 
to take care of us. Onco, one of them 



MORE ABOUT SCHOOLGIBLS. 87 

came from Prince Glass' town, and stay- 
ed with me a week, watching night and 
day, with little sleep. It was a great 
favor, for a number of us were sick at 
once, and we had not the help needed to 
care for the sick. How pleased these 
women were also if they could bring us 
a little present of fresh fish, or some 
choice vegetable. Their love for us was 
ample payment for the care and anxiety 
their training had cost us. 

''A French lady, living in Gaboon, 
once saw some of our young married 
women in' their homes, and said, ' How 
is it that you American ladies induce 
these women to imitate you so? We 
have no such homes around us. Our 
' Sisters of Charity' do not send out such 
girls from their schools.' " 

'' Who were the ' Sisters of Charity' ?" 
asked George. 

" Those at Gaboon were French ladies 



88 GABOON STORIES. 

who spent their lives in labors for the 
Catholic church. They wore blue dress- 
es, muslin caps, and blue veils. They 
had a school at the Plateau, but two 
miles below Baraka, and sometimes, 
when they were out walking with their 
scholars, they called on us. They were 
kind-hearted, earnest women, and I hope 
they loved and tried to follow the bless- 
ed Saviour, though their teaching dif- 
fered from ours. 

^' But for making cosy, comfortable 
homes, with small means, when far from 
the resources of a civilized land, I have 
never seen American ladies equalled ; 
nor, indeed, in the faculty of adapting 
themselves to different circumstances. 
I have seen one of them seated on a low 
stool, in a smoky, bamboo hut, surround- 
ed by heathen Africans, who were ear- 
nestly listening to her simple teaching of 
God's word, and I thought she was re- 



MOKE ABOUT SCHOOLGIRLS. 89 

markablj^ fitted for the work. I saw the 
same lady, not long afterwards, enter- 
taining at her table titled officers of the 
British navy with an ease and grace 
that adorned her Christian profession, 
and reflected great honor on her native 
land. 

''I once heard a lady say that she in- 
tended to train her daughters so that 
they would be fitted to go into the heart 
of Africa as missionary teachers, or pre- 
side at the table of the President of the 
United States, if such should be their 
lot. I have lately seen a notice of the 
sailing of one of her children as a mis- 
sionary, not to Africa, but to China. 

"Now, my dear little girls, and boys, 
too, I hope you will be in earnest to 
learn everything that can fit you for 
usefulness. Often in Africa I had occa- 
sion to recall what the missionary Dr. 
Moffat's mother told him in his boyhood, 
12 



90 GABOON STOllIES. 

when she was teaching him to sew, 'You 
dinna ken where jour lot may be cast/ 
The first great work to do, is to give 
your hearts to Jesus ; then prepare 
yourselves to serve him wherever he 
shall call you.'' 





CHAPTEE VIII. 




THE GOSPEL AMONG THE LOWLY. 

HAYE told you chiefly 
about the children, but to-day 
I would like to tell you of some 
of our grown-up people, who 
were children in Christ — had 
just begun to serve him. There was a 
company of slaves, who lived by them- 
selves on a plantation, and raised food 
for their masters in town. One of thera 
named Panyale, spent more of his time 
in town than the others, and often 
came to church. The truth entered his 
heart, and he became, as we trust, a 
child of Grod. Then he wished to tell 



92 GABOON STORIES. 

his fellow-slaves the same good news of 
a Saviour. He talked with them him- 
self as well as he knew how, and ap- 
plied to the mission for a schoolboy to 
go with him to the plantation and read 
the Bible. It was but a mile away, and 
he and the schoolboy, who was a church 
member, held meetings Sabbath after- 
noons. The people were greatly inter- 
ested, and anxious. to learn more of the 
way to be saved. So one Friday after- 
noon, six of the men and four women 
came in to attend our weekly prayer- 
meeting, held in the reception-room of 
the mission-house. 

'^Few of them had ever been at the 
mission before. Everything there was 
strange, but during the meeting, instead 
of looking around at the maps and pic- 
tures on the walls, the neat American 
furniture, the matting on the floor, or 
the strange missionary ladies, they kept 



GOSPEL AMONG THE LOWLY. 93 

their eyes steadily fixed on the mission- 
ary, and the tears rolled down their 
cheeks as he spoke of the love of Christ. 
Soon these ten persons were all hoping 
that they had given their hearts to the 
Saviour. When they were examined 
for admission into the church, they could 
not repeat a text of Scripture, or answer 
simple questions in the catechism, but 
they could tell how sorry they w^ere that 
they had sinned against so good a God, 
and how they loved the blessed Saviour 
who died for them. They understood, 
too, what was right and wrong, and when 
questioned about heathen customs, and 
asked if such and such things were right, 
they would say, ' Oh, no, we would 
rather die than do that.' They were 
formed into a class for instruction in the 
catechism, and it was amusing to hear 
their questions about what they ought to 
do. One man thought it must be wrong 



94 GABOON STOr.IES. 

to eat as much on Sundays as on other 
(lays. A woman asked if she ought not 
to take off the two or three brass rings 
she wore as ornaments around her an- 
kles, now that she had become a Chris- 
tian. We did not ask these poor people 
to dress as we did, for they could not 
afford it. Their own costume was more 
suitable, and w^as quite becoming. After 
due instruction they were baptized and 
received into the church, and others of 
their friends followed them in the nar- 
row way from time to time. 

'' As w^e got acquainted with them we 
liked to have them come to see us very 
much. Our girls were in the habit first 
of speaking of them as the * people who 
are trying' — 'mangi wi keniza;' after- 
wards as the ' people who have found' — 
' mangi wa dengi.' There was one live- 
ly little woman among them, called 
Akera, who often came skipping in at 



GOSPEL AMONG THE LOWLY. 95 

the door, calling at once for ' Mamma/ 
if I was not in sight. She was always 
ready for a pleasant talk, or, if I was 
busy, she would ask one of the girls to 
read to her from the Mpongwe Scrip- 
tures. She was so surprised if she saw 
the girls disobedient or out of temper. 
^How can you behave so,' she would 
say, ' when mamma is doing so much 
for you, and you have everything to 
help you do right?' and she would go 
on reproving them, till they hung down 
their heads in shame. Akera sickened 
and died, within a year after she joined 
the church. It was a rainy time, and 
before any of us could go to see her, she 
was too far gone to speak. But I hope 
' to meet her in the promised land.' 
Ndinga, her husband, had been a bright, 
pleasant young man, but he was always 
sad after her death. In a few months 
he too was taken very sick, but he was 



86 GABOON STOKIES. 

then ill town, where we could go and 
see him, and attend to his comfort. He 
suffered very much, but he trusted in 
Jesus through it all. The last two days 
of his life he had- to be bolstered up in 
a rocking-chair, for he could scarcely 
breathe ; but he was talking of the love 
of Jesus, whenever he could speak. For 
six hours he was gasping in death, but 
calling on the dear Saviour all the time. 
His heathen friends looked on in wonder. 
They had never seen such a death. His 
Christian friends encouraged him, as best 
they could, for their great grief. The 
strange sight drew in foreigners, who 
were in business in Gaboon, and they 
left the place with tears in their eyes, 
saying, ' I will not say after this, that the 
missionaries have not done any good.' '^ 
''Aunty, did you ever go and see 
these people on their plantations ?'' 
asked Walter. 



GOSPEL AMONG THE LOWLY. 97 

'* Yes, I was there two or three times. 
We went some distance up a small creek 
in a canoe» It was cool and shady, and 
the water was very smooth. Then we 
walked a little way through the grass as 
high as our heads. They were very 
peaceful in their little settlement, hav- 
ing prayers together, night and morn- 



ing. 



" I was there once with my girls, when 
there came up a tornado, or violent 
storm of wind and rain. The lightning 
was very bright, flash after flash close 
together, while the sky was black with 
rain-clouds. The loud thunder came, 
peal after peal, crash upon crash. The 
trees bent in the wind, and the low bam- 
boo houses leaned over till we feared 
they would fall upon us. The girls were 
always afraid of thunder, and now they 
gathered close together and cried. One 
of the men, Baganji b}" nam.e, who was 



98 GABOON STOKIES. 

SO dull that persons bad questioned 
whether he had mind enough to be a 
Christian, called out to the girls above 
the noise of the driving rain, ' What ! 
3^ou afraid now ? What will you do 
when the last trump sounds? Why do 
you not repent of your sins ?^ I heard 
the girls tell of this several times after- 
wards, and I believe it did them more 
good than a sermon. They came home 
very quietly after it, through the wet 
grass, without their usual laughing and 



singing.'^ 



*'But did not you teach those people 
to read?'' asked Emma. 

"I do not think they could learn. 
They placed their children in school. 
We did try to teach some of the grown- 
up people, but they could not remember 
the letters. But they never forgot the 
truths they heard. Panyale, the one I 
first spoke of, talked better than many 



GOSPEL AMONG THE LOWLY. 99 

of our best scholars, for his heart was 
warm with the love of Jesus, and wher- 
ever he went, he tried to persuade the 
people to turn to God. I heard Mm tell 
once of his talking to the wild Pangwes 
far inland among the hills, about their 
duty to their heavenly Father, and one 
of them spoke up, and said, ' Panyale, 
you are always talking about your Fa- 
ther, God, Now^ what was your Father 
about, the day you were caught and car- 
ried away as a slave?' Panyale said, 
' I could only pray. Father, teach him 
and nie', for I do not understand it.^ 
Poor man ! he did not wait long to have 
it made plain. He was shot dead by a 
band of warriors, when he was purchas- 
ing building-materials for the mission in 
an inland town. He had been at morn- 
ing-prayers, after which his little daugh- 
ter ran out to play, and was seized by 
men lying in wait. He rescued her, 



100 GABOON STOIUES. 

but lost his own life. We mourned him 
very much. He was a great loss to his 
family and fellow-Christians. They never 
prospered so well afterwards. Several 
of them have since died. 

*' Some of our most useful helpers were 
those who, like Panyale^ could not read. 
Okota, who was an officer in the church 
for thirteen years before his death, could 
not read, though he tried very hard to 
learn. He was a skilful carpenter, and 
a tolerable blacksmith, and nearly all 
the mission-buildings show his workman- 
ship. After his death, the Scotch mer- 
chant for whom he was building a house, 
w^as obliged to employ a foreign work- 
man, at four times the wages Okota re- 
ceived. He w^as a faithful Christian. 
Whoever disappointed us, Okota was 
ever in his place. The temptations that 
overcame others, had no power over 
him. I remonibcM* wlion a voinicr mnn 



GOSPEL AMONG THE LOWLY. 101 

of some position and influence was ex- 
amined for admission to the church, 
Okota said to him, ' Makai, do you 
know what jon are doing ? Do you 
know that tem.ptations await you, that 
snares will be set to entrap you ; that you 
will be laughed it, called a fool ; that you 
will become the ' song of the drunk- 
ard^? Can you resist the tempter as 
your Saviour did ? Can you wage this 
warfare to the end ? If you can, w^e wel- 
come you to our number, and we will 
strive together for the crown of life/ 

''I assure you, my dear children, that 
among my pleasant anticipations of 
heaven, is the prospect of meeting again 
those 'little ones,' in whom I loved, to 
trace the Saviour's image on earth.'' 




CHAPTEE IX. 




TRAVELLING. 

:LEASE tell us to-day 
about your travelling in 
Africa/^ said Walter. ''I in- 
tend to explore the country 
when I go, like Dr. Living- 
stone.'^ 

'' Well, my boy, I did not do any ex- 
ploring, and 5^ou must ask those who did 
about their experiences. We ladies did 
not go far inland from the rivers, for 
there are no roads, no wagons, or beasts 
of burden there. 

''Our trips up and down the river in 
the four-oared mission boat, built in 
New York, when we had a Mv wind, 



TEAVELLING. 103 

and the heat was not too great, were 
pleasant. '^ 

''That reminds me to ask you, is not 
that a dreadfully hot country V^ 

''Not so hot as you suppose. Al- 
though we are on the equator, the heat 
is not so great as it is farther north. 
The thermometer very seldom rises to 
90^, and usually ranges from 74^ to 84^. 
The regular land and sea-breezes blow- 
ing every morning and afternoon, cool the 
air very much. At our inland stations, 
the sea-breeze did not reach us, unless 
it was very strong, and w^e felt the heat 
more than at the coast. But the days 
and nights being of equal length all the 
year round, enabled us to bear the heat 
better than we can in our long July 
days here. As the sun went down, 
which was invariably at 6 o'clock, the 
air rapidly cooled. We had not the 
long twilights of this country. It was 



104 GABOON STOEIES. 

dark in a few minutes after sunset, and 
the nights were often cool enough for 
two blankets. We feel a slight change 
of temperature more than you do a great 
one here. 

^' But to return to our travelling. The 
dense tropical vegetation along the 
banks of the river is alwaj^s a curious 
sight. We see mangrove-trees growing 
out of the water, their branches reach- 
ing down and forming new roots ; ojs- 
ters attached to their branches, now 
covered l)j the tide, and again left dry. 
The oysters learn to close their shells 
after eating and drinking while the tide 
is up. This explains the stor}^ you have 
heard that we had ' oysters growing on 
trees.' Then again we see gigantic trees 
towering from a mass of underbrush, and 
creeping vines, and thorn-bushes, mak- 
ing a thicket so dense that one could not 
penetrate it faster than he could cut his 



TRAVELLING. 105 

way with an axe. Here and there bam- 
boo villages are -peeping out from the 
cocoa-nut and palm trees. A few hours 
of travelling in such scenery is pleasant. 
But when it comes to a two days' trip, 
with a strong head wind, a ' chopped 
sea' as sailors say, the boat pitching and 
tossing and rocking, into and out of the 
waves, till we are thoroughly drenched 
with salt water, and the skin is worn off 
the arms in the vain attempt to keep the 
boat upright, much as I have been at 
sea, I do not enjoy such sailing. 

'' The first time I went to Nengenenge, 
about sixty miles up the river from 
Baraka, I started in haste, alone with 
five native men for boatmen, because I 

had heard that Mr. P- was sick at 

that place, having come thither from a 
Pangwe town beyond. The tide was 
against us, and there was a strong head 
wind. I was out one night and nearly 
U 



106 GABOON STORIES. 

two clays, drenched by the heavy waves 
and scorched by the burning sun. We 
kept close to the shore while rowing 
against the tide. The glaring white 
beach was painful to the eyes, and the 
slimy roots of the mangrove-trees left 
high and dry at low tide showed reptiles 
and creeping things, and the huge man- 
grove flies buzzed about our ears, sting- 
ing almost as severely as bees. The 
boatmen were tired and cross long be- 
fore the journey's end. To crown all, 
when we reached Nengenenge late on 

the second night, I found Mr. P had 

got better, and having given up expect- 
ing me had left on another trip. He re- 
turned two days later. 

''On other occasions avc have been 
out in terrible tornadoes and in great 
danger of upsetting. We have great 
cause for thankfulness that no loss of life 
has occurred in all these exposures. 



TBAVELLING. 107 

Our Corisco friends have a harder ex- 
perience than we^ as their boating is 
mostly on the rough open sea, instead of 
on a river, where storms and waves are 
less violent.'^ 

''How could 5^ou travel alone with 
the natives?'^ said little May; ''were you 
not afraid V^ 

"No, indeed, my dear child, I cannot 
remember that I ever was afraid of a 
native in Africa. I have made many 
boat and canoe trips alone with them, 
on the Gaboon and its branches, and out 
at sea, visiting friends at Corisco, an 
island forty miles distant, and I never 
had any occasion of complaint. They 
' were always attentive and considerate. 
I have been left alone, too, at Nenge- 
nenge, and feared nothing. Mrs. W— 
once stayed alone at Nengenenge four 
days with the school children, while her 
husband and Mr. Herrick made a trip 



108 GABOON STOllIES. 

up the river. During the time a large 
canoe full of wild Pangwes landed right 
before the house and came in. The chief 
of the village saw them and came at 

once and stayed with Mrs. W till 

they had gone again. He was a rough, 
coarse man, but he considered Mrs. 

W as under his protection while 

her husband was awa3^ We had many 
warm friends among the natives, but 
never an enemy that I knew of. When 
we remember what a miserably poor 
people they are and how rich we seemed 
in their eyes, plainly as we lived, it was 
Avonderful that they stole from us so very 
1 ttle. I do not remember ever losing 
anything at Nengenenge, although we 
lived so near the natives that we could 
throw a stone into their village. 

^' But to go on with our modes of trav- 
el. We ladies sometimes went short dis- 
tmces in a hammock made of sail-cloth, 



TRAVELLING. 109 

fastened to a pole, and carried on the 
slioulders of two meii. I disliked this 
very much, it seemed so like making 
beasts of burden of human beings. I felt 
very helpless too, tucked in such a nar- 
row space. Once, passing along the 
beach in a hammock, my bearers were 
asked, ' Whose corpse is that you have 
there V I did not blame those who made 
the mistake. 

'' I liked better to go in our hand car- 
riage. It was made for drawing barrels 
and boxes from the beach, but with a 
low chair fastened to the bed, a lady 
could ride very nicely. It was only 
play for the school-boj^s to draw ns 
along the smooth beach. Once a sick 
English captain was taking tea with Mr. 
and Mrs. W — — , and found he was not 
able to walk back to the beach. 

^^^What shall I do?^ he said, ^you 
can not call a cab in this country.' 



110 GABOON STOniES. 

'''Yes, we can,' Mr. W— — said, and 
started him off very nicely in the car- 
riage with a strong team of bo3^s/' 

''Could you not have horses there ?^^ 
asked Freddy. 

" Yes, the mission did try horses, pur- 
chased at Lagos, near the mouth of the 
river Niger. But they were small and 
feeble. The climate did not^suit them 
very well, and so they were sold one af- 
ter another, it being too much expense 
and trouble to keep them for the short 
distances the roads allowed of horseback 
riding. You must recollect there w^ere 
no broad carriage-roads as in this coun- 
try. The natives following one after 
another, made foot-paths through the 
jungle, stooping down to go under the 
low limbs that stretched across the path, 
crawling over the big logs that obstruct- 
ed the way, and making a detour around 
the tr^^o-fops that blockaded the passage. 



TKAVELLING. 



Ill 



The rain that fell in torrents in the rainy- 
season found these paths convenient 
channels, and washed and gullied them 
abundantly, leaving great boulders and 
roots of trees exposed in the track so 
that the natives could scarcely get along, 
much less a horse and carriage. Then 
there were no bridges or ferries across 
the streams. The natives waded, swam, 
or built rafts of logs, on which to cross 
when their journeys required it. 





- V-Z_l:~7 



'y ^^ 



CHAPTEE X. 





LEARNING BARBAROUS LANGUAGES. 

jOW did you ever learn that 
strange language, aunty V^ 
asked Etta, when my little 
audience had again assembled. 
'' Oh, for that matter, there 
is nothing like knowing that it must be 
done. I did think I never should under- 
stand the Babel of strange sounds which 
met my ears when the people crowded 
on board the vessel, as we first sailed up 
the Gaboon. But when I found that 
many of the school children spoke Eng- 
lish well, and also two or three native 
dialects, I decided that I certainly could 



BARBAROUS LANGUAGES. 113 

learn one. I had acquired a few senten- 
ces on the voyage out, and ventured to 
speak them to the children — when the 
grown people were out of hearing. They 
were just as great chatterboxes as some 
little folks in this country whom I could 
name, and never tired of repeating over 
and over anything I did not at first un- 
derstand. Neither did they laugh at 
my blunders, unless they were so funny 
that I laughed too when I saw the mis- 
take ; as when I called them ' my little 
lilies,^ instead of ' my little people.' But 
I had only changed two letters : ' alan- 
ga ' was the word for lilies, and ' anlaga' 
for people. They certainly were not 
white lilies. (I once saw a native on 
board a vessel, as black as a coal, who 
called himself ' Miss Blanche.') 

*'I sometimes showed the children 
pictures, and listened to their comments 
upon them. I had one advantage, which 

Gaboon Stones. XD 



114 GABOON STOKIES. 

I fear a foreigner would not have who 
should undertake to learn English from 
children in this country: all the chil- 
dren spoke correctly. If a child made a 
mistake, and as they expressed it, broke 
the bones of the Mpongwe language, you 
might be sure that child belonged to 
some interior tribe, and rendered him- 
self liable at once to be called ' Bush- 
man,' which is the same as 'greenhorn,' 
or ' backwoodsman ' here. 

''The language itself too is eas}^, and 
arranged with a sj^stem that is wonder- 
ful, when we remember that not a word 
of it was written till the missionaries 
went to Gaboon in 1842. The old chiefs 
claim that it surpasses the English for 
sensible arrangement ; for instance, the 
adjective followed the noun, which, they 
said, was as it should be ; you ought to 
first name your subject, then describe it 
as much as you please ; as ' nago mbia/ 



BARBAROUS LANGUAGES. 115 

house good. Thus you have the idea of 
a house in your mind while the speaker 
goes on to describe it; but in the Eng- 
lish arrangement, as, 'good house,' the 
word ' good ' by itself, they objected, 
gave no idea of anything at all, and. you 
had to wait till the phrase was finished 
before you could take hold of it. Their 
universal use of . the passive voice, too, 
they boasted of as a convenience, as it 
gives them an opportunity of making a 
complaint without mentioning names, as 
when a girl changed her seat in school, 
and gave as a reason, ' Mi azyugio gogo,' 
' I was teased there.' 

'* When I commenced learning Mpon- 
gwe, there were a few reading books 
printed in the language, a catechism, 
hymn-book, and some portions of Scrip- 
ture, and with these helps it was not 
long till I understood something of the 
sermons I heard. It was very different 



116 GABOON STORIES. 

when I went down into the villages, and 
tried to talk with the women, or listen 
to them. ThejT- talked abont what inter- 
ested them most, their food, their Avork, 
their gardens, their ornaments, and their 
attire, and I could only catch a word 
here and there. 

*' But the real trouble in learning a 
barbarous language came when we moved 
up the Ikai creek, twenty-five miles from 
Baraka, ten months after we reached 
Gaboon. Here we were in the Bakele 
tribe, "^ who understood not a word of 
English, and not much more Mpongwe 
than we did ourselves. We were on 
new ground, with not a word of the 
language reduced to writing, except as 

Mr. P had made a beginning by 

himself, while our dwelling-house was 
being built. 

* Bakele, the name of the tribe. Their language 
is called Dikele. 



BARBAROUS LANGUAGES. 117 

' He had his own difficulties in wri- 
ting down words from the lips of the 
natives, as they had no idea of what he 
meant, and feared some harm would 
come of it. If he asked a man to say 
' my dog,' so that he might form a de- 
clension, the man got angry, and said, 
'Why do you call me a dog?' If he 
asked him to say ' ray mouse,' he an- 
swered, ' I have no mice.' It was only 
by allowing the people to crowd around 
him all day long, even bringing their 
food and eating in his house, that little 
by little, with much questioning and 
great patience, a beginning to the Bake- 
le grammar was made. But being shut 
up with a people of strange language is 
the very best way to learn it. 

'' The Mpongwe catechism was not 
simple enough for such a very ignorant 
people, and a new one was written and 
translated, containing enough of the 



118 GABOON STORIES. 

principal truths of the Bible to lead one 
to trust in the blessed Saviour for salva- 
tion, if he should hear nothing more. 
The children very soon learned this. 

Then Mr. P wrote for me a simple 

prayer to use in school. This beginning 
made, I kept my ears ever on the strain 
to understand what people were talking 
about. 

"It did seem strange when I visited 
ray native land to be able to understand 
every word I heard spoken. We were 
accustomed to hear three or four dialects 
spoken by our school children. Each 
spoke his own, and the others understood 
him, and replied in a different dialect.*' 

''What do you mean by dialect ?'' 
asked Walter. 

''A language having the same ar- 
rangement and rules as another, but the 
words different in part. After we had 
learned Mpongwe, it was easier to learn 



BARBAKOUS LANGUAGES. 119 

Dikele ; and having some knowledge of 
the two, we could understand many 
words in Benga, (the language of the 
Corisco people,) also in Sikani and Pa- 
ngwe ; just as a good French scholar 
can understand something of Spanish, 
Portuguese, and Italian. 

''I was so thankful when Mr. P 

had learned enough of the Dikele lan- 
guage to preach without an interpreter. 
At first he could only repeat a simple 
sentence in Mpongwe, and the interpre- 
ter told it to the people in Dikele. But 
the interpreter cared nothing for the 
truth, and took no pains to translate 

correctly. Once Mr. P called upon 

a Mpongwe trader to interpret for him, 
as the Bakele man he usually employed 
was absent. The man consented ; but he 
enlarged upon the sermon, saying many 
things on his own account, particularly 
when anything was said about their sins. 



120 GABOON STORIES. 

These he charged home upon them for- 
cibly, especially their great wickedness 
in cheating the Mpongwes who came to 
trade with them. For this, he assured 
them, they would be severely punished. 
There were several persons present who 
understood both languages, and they 
laughed heartily over it, as a good joke. 
The Bakele people are far behind the 
Mpongwes in civilization, and the people 
who assembled to hear the word of life 
on the Sabbath, and at other times, were 
like a company of unruly children. If 
a child cried in meeting, a dozen loud 
voices scolded it. If a dog barked, it 
was driven out with blows, to the seri- 
ous interruption of the sermon. When 
the minister opposed their cherished 
practices with the word of Grod, a voice 
would call out, ' That 's a lie !' If his ser- 
mon was longer than consisted with their 
ideas of propriety, the chief would call 



BAR13A110US LANGUAGES. 121 

out, 'Make haste and finish, for I have a 
wild deer at my house I wish to cut up/ 

''But with all these hinderances, the 
truth presented was plain, direct, and 
forcible : ' You are sinners, in danger of 
eternal death; Christ died to save you/ 
Day by day these truths were sounded 
in their ears with an earnestness from 
which they could not escape. Old men 
and women asked to be taught to pray. 
They came to our house to attend morn- 
ing and evening worship, and for a time 
they did seem to be stretching out their 
hands unto God. But the arrival Of a 
company of Mpongwe traders with a 
supply of rum diverted them from the 
one thing needful. Our school children 
were more benefited, and some of them 
hoped in Christ. 

" The results of the labor spent at Ikai 

seem now to be small, but I love to look 

back upon that part of my life. We 
16 



122 GABOON STOKIES. 

were very happy working for Jesus. So 
were the dear ladies who lived there 
after us. Mrs. Pierce went home to her 
Saviour after spending a year among 
that people, and Mrs. Best gave them 
up very reluctanth^ when her help was 
needed at the seacoast. 

''It was in the quiet of the Ikai sta- 
tion that Mr. Best with his schoolboys 
translated portions of the Scriptures into 
Dikele, which will, I hope, be doing good 
as long as the language is spoken. This 
is the 'handful of corn upon the top of the 
mountain, the fruit whereof shall shake 
like Lebanon.^ I never heard the grand 
old Psalms in a foreign dress till I heard 
them in Dikele, and it has alwaj^s since 
seemed to me a majestic language. Even 
now, when I read, ' Clouds and darkness 
are round about him,' I recall the words, 
'Bivinji na divityiki bi thi ye bomitata;' 
and so with other portions. I remem- 



BARBAROUS LANGUAGES. 123 

ber one evening at Nengenenge, (we 
used the Dikele language there,) when 
there was a special religious interest, 
and our house was nightly filled at the 
time of evening worship. The Psalm 
read in course was the one hundred and 
thii'ty-ninth, and was enforced by a few 
earnest words. As those sublime verses 
were read, ' If I take the wings of the 
morning, and dwell in the uttermost 
parts of the sea, even there shall thy 
hand lead me, and thy right hand shall 
hold me,'* hardened, brutal men listened 
in awe, putting their hands over their 
mouths in indication of surprise. As 
they went aw^ay they said, 'Surely God 
is great; w^e cannot understand him.' 

''Here is a verse from one of our 
Dikele hymns : 

" * Me paka we Anyambie, 

Na nlema gwame na thathem. 

Me e thatlia "bimamia 

Bi we mislii ka^na binen. ' 



124 GABOON STORIES. 

"The 113^11111 is a versification of the 
ninth Psalm: 'I will praise thee, 
Lord, with my whole heart : I will de- 
clare all thy marvellous works/ 

*' While the Ikai station was left 
vacant, hoping for more missionaries to 
resume it, the wild Pangwes came upon 
the place and drove aw^ay the.Bakele^ 
The mission-house was burned in the 
war, and savage Pangwes are now liv- 
ing there, and eating the fruit of the 
oronge-trees we planted.'' 





CHAPTER XI. 



INSECTS, REPTILES, AND ANIMALS. 




^S not that a dreadful country 
for snakes, alligators, and such 
tilings V^ commenced Georgy, 
as my little folks again seated 
themselves around me. 
"Not as much so as you suppose. 1 
never saw an alligator or any other, 
frightful animal in my journeys. Often 
in our boat-trips we tied up close to the 
mangrove-trees, and waited five or six 
hours for the tide to change. But how- 
ever dark the night, I never thought of 
reptiles, for I did not see them by day. 



126 GABOON STORIES. 

It is true I have seen snakes, and I re- 
member when a whole school of chil- 
dren, with their native teacher at their 
head, rushed out pell-mell from the win- 
dows and doors of the schoolhouse at the 
sight of a small green snake in the roof. 
There are poisonous snakes in the coun- 
try, I know, for I have seen them in Dr. 
Ford's bottles of alcohol, but we are not 
in constant danger from them, as people 
are in India, I never heard in Gaboon 
of a person dying from the bite of a 
snake. The centipede is poisonous, but 
I have been, in this country, when liv- 
ing in an old house, in more terror from 
great, black spiders, than I was in Africa 
from reptiles and insects. 

** The- ants of various kinds were in- 
deed very destructive to food, clothing, 
and books, and made a great deal of 
trouble for housekeepers. But of late 
years, all the mission-houses are built 



INSECTS, REPTILES, ETC. 127 

upon posts, raising them four or five 
feet from the ground, leaving an open 
space beneath to which the fowls have 
free access. This is healthier, as the air 
has free circulation under the house, and 
when the ground below is often swept, 
the insects cannot build their nests. The 
posts, too, on which the house rests, are 
kept painted with coal-tar in which ar- 
senic is mixed, and the white ants will 
not go over it while fresh. But the paint 
must often be renewed, and the posts 
w^atched, or before you know it the white 
ants will bore their covered way up and 
'ascend into your library or wardrobe. 
Then when you come to inspect your 
treasures, they wilt crumble in your 
hands. 

One kind of white ant builds the won- 
derful clay houses you may have seen 
pictured in j^our geographies, higher 
than a man's head, with a large cone in 



128 GABOON STOlllES. 

the centre, and smaller ones grouped 
around it. There was such an ant's nest 
back of the mission-house at Nenge- 
nenge. It was nearly as hard as stone. 
It could liardly be broken with a hatch- 
et, and the violent rains did not wash it 
away.^' 

''Did 3'ou not have a kind of ants 
called ' Drivers ' V^ asked Walter. 

''Yes, and they are rightly named, 
for they drive before them every living 
creature. They troubled us a great deal 
at our Ikai home. The house was built 
directly upon the ground, and we were 
often awakened from slumber by herr- 
ing the school-children scream, ' Bashi- 
kwe,' (drivers,) and we Irad to hasten to 
their help. The drivers came in count- 
less numbers, fastening their sharp nip- 
pers in the flesh so deep, that it was 
easier pulling them apart than pulling 
them out. After they entered the house, 



INSECTS, BEPTILES, ETC. 129 

there was no way but to let them take 
their course, moving eatables to a place 
of safety, and keeping out of their way 
j^ourself. If we saw a procession ap- 
proaching the house, we could turn them 
aside with live coals, and oblige them to 
take another road ; but when they came 
in the night, they met no opposition. 
On one occasion, the Ikai station was 
occupied for a few days by four gentle- 
men, the lady housekeeper being absent 
on account of feeble health. The drivers 
attacked them one night ; but how they 
fought them, and how they fared, we 
never heard, for if one of them attempt- 
ed to tell the storj^, he could not pro- 
ceed for laughing. Three of the gentle- 
men protested against the selfishness of 
the fourth, who made his bed on the 
dining-table, the only spot in the house 
overlooked by the insects. 

^' There was one gain from such a vis- 



130 GABOON STORIES. 

itatioii. They cleared the Louse of mice, 
white ants, and cockroaches/' 

*' But, aunty, tell us about your mon- 
keys,'' said Freddy. 

'' I have seen many kinds of monkeys, 
from the little Telinga, not longer than 
my hand, with a very long tail, to the 
huge gorilla, which Mr. Du Chaillu has 
made so famous. We often had a pet 
monkey in the mission, and Jacko had 
many a frolic with the boys. He did 
not like at all to be left alone on Sun- 
day, and often broke from his confine- 
ment and came into church, leaping over 
people^s heads till he reached the pulpit, 
where he would seat himself to take a 
look at the congregation, till one of the 
boys would catch him by the long string 
with which he was tied, and take him 
home again/' 

''How did the natives catch the wild 
monkeys?'^ asked Walter. 



INSECTS, REPTILES, ETC. 131 

" They could only be caught by shoot- 
ing the mother, and taking the baby 
monkey from the dead body to which it 
clung.'' 

''Did you ever see a live gorilla?'' 
asked George. 

'^ Only j^oung ones. I have seen very 
large ones which were dead. 

''I saw in October, 1848, the first one 
that was ever brought to the seacoast in 
sight of civilized man. It had been killed 
in the woods and brought into town. The 
news of its arrival quickly reached the 
mission, and we all hastened to see the 
strange object. It was a female, larger 
and broader than a full-grown man. We 
gazed at it in great wonder, but it never 
occurred to us that wise men, a few years 
later, would pronounce this singular an- 
imal the 'missing link' between monkeys 
and men. We had never questioned the 
Bible nnrrntive thnt 'God created man 



132 GABOON STOKIES. 

in his own image/ and did not dream ot 
recognizing an ancestor in the singular 
brute before us. Mr. Wilson purchased 
the skeleton and presented it to a French 
doctor, to whom the mission was under 
obligation for kind attentions in sickness. 
This was the first specimen of a gorilla 
that reached the civilized w^orld. 

"I never saw a living gorilla more 
than a few. months old. Captain Laulin 
brought one to the mission to keep for 
him till he should be ready to sail for 
New York ; but though the best of care 
was taken of it, before he started the 
poor little animal died. It used to take 
a saucer of milk in its hands and raise it 
to its mouth like a child. If one of the 
gentlemen took it up, it put its long arms 
around his neck, and rested its head 
against his cheek like a baby. I did 
not like to see a brute animal so petted 
by a human being, as some ladies pet 



INSECTS, REPTILES, ETC. 133 

and fondle their poodles. So I was not 
greatly pleased when Master Gorilla 
would come stooping like a feeble old 
man, and seat himself close to me, gath- 
ering the folds of my dress around him 
as if he were cold. 

"The chimpanzee I often saw tame in 
the villages. It is not near so large as 
the gorilla when full-grown, but looks a 
little more like a human being.'' 

"But did you have no wild beasts 
around you V^ asked George. 

"Yes, we had leopards, which came 
into the mission-yard and carried off 
sheep and calves. A leopard came to 
our back porch at the Ikai and carried 
off our watch-dog. We only heard one 
yelp, and saw the leopard's tracks next 
morning. They did not come so close 
except in the dry season, when game 
was scarce in the woods. 

" Elephants are there, but not near so 



134 GABOON STORIES. 

numerous around Gaboon as they were 
formerly. They are very destructive to 
the farms of the natives, and when a 
troop of forty or fifty take a plantation 
in their way, woe to the growing corn, 
plantains, and everything else edible. 
They eat, trample, and destroy without 
mercy. Just before we moved to the 
Ikai station, the elephants had destroj^ed 
the farms, so as to produce almost a fam- 
ine in the town, and while we were liv- 
ing there a troop came into the neigh- 
borhood. The natives turned out in 
force with dogs, guns, fire, and shoutings 
by day and night, to defend their plan- 
tations. Thev came so near our house, 
that we could hear the din made to drive 
them off. 

'' I think we ladies were more annoyed 
by the wild-cat, or bush-cat, than by any 
other animal, because they caught our 
chickens. We would be awakened at 



INSECTS, REPTILES, ETC. 135 

night by a fluttering and squalling among 
the fowls, and all the speed possible did 
not save them. The bush-cat could dig 
through the roof of a bamboo house. Mr. 
Walker rushed out with his gun one 
night on hearing the disturbance, and 
fired at an animal running past the fow^l- 
house. It fell down dead, but he was 
surprised and distressed to find that he 
had shot Mrs. Walker's little English 
spaniel, ' Arab.' Poor Arab was greatly 
lamented, and had an honorable burial 
from the schoolboys next day.'' 

''I would like to hear about your 
birds, auntie," said Emma. 

''Well, we had a great variety of 
birds of splendid plumage. I know not 
how many kinds of humming-birds we 
had, and larger species, till we come to 
the web-footed pelican, which waded on 
the sandbars at the entrance of the 
creeks. We often saw these with the 



136 GABOON STORIES. 

great pouch under their enormous bills 
distended with the fish they had taken. 
But our birds did not sing so sweetly as 
the birds do here. How the rice-birds 
did chatter in our yard at Ikai. They 
were black and yellow ; very showy, 
and very noisy. We were raising a 
crop of rice, and just before it began to 
head they came in great numbers, and 
built their nests on a slender tree near 
the house. The nests were made of 
grass and strips of plantain-leaves ; were 
very light, and some of them had a roof 
over the top' to keep them dry. The 
birds hung their nests all over the tree, 
as thick as apples in a good fruit season. 
There must have been hundreds of them 
upon this small tree. Such a noise as 
they awoke us with in the morning ! I 
have heard that these birds choose such 
a frail support so that the monkeys can- 
not get their eggs, as the limbs will not 



INSECTS, REPTILES, ETC. 137 

bear their weight. Eyen the weight of 
the nests and unfledged birds was too 
much for the tree at one time, for a 
branch broke off, and dozens of nests, 
with their young birds, came to the 
ground. These mischievous little birds 
made us a great deal of trouble, by steal- 
ing our rice as it ripened. The only way 
to secure any for ourselves, was by cross- 
ing the field several times with long 
strings tied to the tops of poles, in such 
a v/ay that a boy, watching at one end, 
could pull the strings and frighten away 
the birds. In this way the field had to 
be watched for two or three weeks be- 
fore the rice was cut.^^ 

''You had plenty of parrots there, 
had you not V^ said George. 

'' You would have thought so, had you 

been on board our vessel when I came 

home. It was the parrot season. The 

parrot makes her nest in a hollow tree 

18 



138 GABOON STOniES. 

in the woods, laying but two eggs. In 
February or March the birds are hatch- 
ed, and the natives take them away when 
too young to fly, bringing them into the 
villages in rough bamboo cages. They 
sell the voung ones for twenty-five cents 
each. An old, tame bird, which is a good 
talker, will bring several dollars. There 
were more than two hundred on board 
the vessel on my last voyage. Each 
sailor had at least a dozen, and captain, 
mates, and passengers all had them. A 
vessel from California to Liverpool met 
us in mid ocean, and the captain came 
on board to give us letters for New York. 
He said he heard our parrots almost as 
soon as he saw the vessel. 

''We had some fine parrots in the 
mission. One would call the children, 
imitating precisely a lady's tones, and 
when they came running to see what was 
wanted, Poll laughed in great glee. Poll 



INSECTS, KEPTILES, ETC. 139 

would go through the whole service of 
morning worship, imitating the tones of 
reading, singing, and prayer, finishing 
with a loud laugh. Our parrots and mon- 
keys were so cunning, it almost seemed 
as if they knew as much as some poor 
stupid children we had in school. But 
every child, however dull and slow, had 
an immortal soul, for which Christ died, 
and though it sometimics took long and 
patient teaching, they learned at last that 
they were sinners, and could only be 
saved by loving and trusting the blessed 
Saviour. This is the one lesson for us 
all.'' 




CHAPTEE XII. 




THE FOOD WE ATE. 

^F we go to Africa when we 
grow up, will we get plenty of 
good tilings to eat there ?'' ask- 
ed little Freddy. 

''That is quite an important 
question, my boy. You must have com- 
fortable food, or you cannot have health 
and strength to work. Missionaries at 
Gaboon do not often suffer for lack of 
good wholesome food, unless when trav- 
elling. I would like now to taste a good 
ripe baked plantain. This is the vege- 
table we used the most. It grows in 
large bunches upon a soft stock or stem. 



THE FOOD WE ATE. 141 

fifteen or twenty feet high. Every little 
village around Gaboon is almost hid by 
the plantain-trees. The natives usually 
cut the fruit down when green, and boil 
them for eating. We liked them better 
when ripe. A ripe plantain when baked, 
is like both a baked apple and a potato. 
We had sweet potatoes, which on new 
ground grew very large ; yams, a large 
vegetable growing in the ground like 
potatoes, and Indian corn. Rice is not 
cultivated by the Gaboon people, but we 
raised it with the help of Kroomen, or 
natives of Cape Palmas, who have it for 
their principal food at home. Of late 
years, since our trees commenced bear- 
ing, we have had an abundance of bread- 
fruit ; sometimes feeding the school-chil- 
dren upon it for weeks together, when 
other vegetables failed. It grew upon a 
very large tree, with wide-spreading 
branches, and large roots running over 



142 GABOON STOBIES. 

the top of the ground a long distance. 
The leaf was in shape like that of the 
white oak, but two feet long, wide in 
proportion, its stem larger than my 
thumb. A full-grown bread-fruit was 
quite round, nearly smooth, and as large 
as little Nelly's head. It would give 
3'ou quite a bump, if one of them hit you 

in falling. I remember Mrs. W 's 

cook coming in from the garden, with a 
rueful face, holding his head with one 
hand, and showing her a bread-fruit 
split into fragments. His skull had 
proved the harder of the two. The 
fruit must have hit him from a height ot 
twenty feet. When baked and eaten 
hot, they were a good substitute for 
bread, and were better still fried for 
breakfast the next day.'' 

'' What did you have for meat?'' asked 
Walter. 

*' We had cliickens and e|jgs, fresh 



THE FOOD AVE ATE. 143 

fish sometimes, and occasionally sheep 
and goats. Salt-beef we got from New 
York.'' 

''But did you not have cows there?*' 
said George. 

'' Oh, yes, and you would laugh to see 
them, so small and sleek and fat, with 
scarcely any horns. They gave very 
little milk, and dried up as soon as the 
calf was taken away. But we did some- 
times make our own butter, churning it 
in a wide-mouthed bottle. And we did 
sometimes get a present of fresh-beef 
from a French or English merchant." 

^'Did your schoolchildren eat just 
what jon did ?" asked Emma. 

''Not quite. We had flour, salt-meat, 
tea, coffee and sugar from American ves- 
sels, and could not afford such expensive 
food for the native children. They had 
plantains, sweet potatoes, and cassada, 
or manioc. This is a root which the na- 



144 GABOON STORIES. 

tives prepare by soaking it in water till 
it is soft, drying it, pounding it in a mor- 
tar, and making it into dough, then 
moulding it into rolls a foot long, and as 
large as a man's arm, and steaming it 
two hours. It would keep fresh three 
or four days after cooking, and was a 
convenient article of food for taking 
on a journey. The children liked it 
very much, but I never could eat it. 
We gave the children peanuts, which 
are a native product, and dried or 
smoked fish. They cooked their food 
in their own style, and a very important 
affair it was. We never could give them 
fish enough. Soon after little Retenlo 
came to the mission, he brought me the 
small dried fish which was his evening 
ration, saying, 'I want another; this is 
too small.' I told him to go and ask 
Owondo, one of the larger boj^s, to teach 
him the proper way to ask a favor of me. 



THE FOOD WE ATE, 145 

He came back very soon, and made a 
low bow, saying, ' Mamma, will you 
please give me another fish for my sup- 
per ?^ I thought it best to do so for that 
time, but the next evening he came 
again with the same request. I told 
him I had not it to spare, upon which 
he went out highly indignant, saying, 
' Mamma would not give it me, though I 
said ' please.' ' 

'^The natives could eat an enormous 
amount, and they could go without food 
a long time. I have seen them row a 
boat a whole day, under a burning sun, 
without eating, but when they came 
within reach of food, they fully made 
amends for their fast. 

''I was once helping a native woman 
make a dress, but when she came to try 
it on, to my surprise it was altogether 
too small. I said, ' How is this, Izyura? 
I thought I had a very good fit.' * I 

Gaboon Stories. Xt7 



146 GABOON 8T0KIES. 

have just eaten my dinner, mamma/ she 
said/^ 

"Did you have apples, pears, and 
such fruits V^ asked Etta. 

''No, not one of the fruits you have 
here, nor any of the berries. But we 
had many of the fruits that grow in warm 
climates, and they are much better when 
plucked fresh from the tree, than when 
brought here from a distance. Many 
too are so luscious they will not keep 
but a day or two, and cannot be taken 
out of the country. Our pineapples were 
verj^ large and nice ; oranges were so 
plenty that the trees broke down under 
their weight. We had also limes, bana- 
nas, mango-plums, guavas, granadillas, 
sweet-sops and sour-sops. If you ask 
me what these are like, I must beg you 
to go and try them for yourselves, for I 
cannot describe them. 

" We had a few coffee-trees in the mis- 



THE FOOD WE- ATE. 147 

sioii, which bore abundantly, and the 
flavor was as fine as that of any coffee 
in the world. Our garden-vegetables 
did not succeed so well as the fruits, on 
account of the very heavy rains which 
washed the soil, and beat the tender 
plants into the ground. 

''Vegetables and fruits in Africa re- 
quire very little cultivation compared 
with the hard work bestowed upon our 
farms in this climate. And so the peo- 
ple are lazy because they can live with 
little labor. The men consider it degra- 
ding to till the soil ; that is employment 
for women, slaves, and white people. 
A mother once came to the mission to 
complain that her little son in school was 
set to work at the regular times as though 
he were white! Of course, with such 
principles, it is hard to persuade them 
to ' Strive to enter in at the strait gate.' 
Their idea of happiness seems to consist 



148 



GABOON STORIES. 



ill being perfectly idle, without employ- 
ment for mind or body. 

''A native once said he loved God 
for two things : He made Sunday, when 
people must not work, and he made sleep, 
which was the very best of his works. 
So you see how hard it is to rouse them 
to a concern for their souls. But the 
Spirit of God can do it, has often done 
it.'' 





CHAPTEE XIII. 



LAST TALK. 




OW, my dear girls and 
boys, tills is the last day 
we are to be together, and we 
must bring our talks to a close. 
I hope what I have told you 
shows that I have only pleasant recol- 
lections of my life in Gaboon. I do not 
know how we could be happier on earth 
than we were while living at Nenge- 
nenge, sixty miles from a white family, 

at a time when Mr. P and myself 

were five months without seeing a white 



150 GABOON STORIES. 

face, or hearing a word of English ex- 
cept from each other. 

''Here is a sketch of our pleasant 
Nengenenge home, (see frontispiece,) 
drawn by Mrs. Bushnell, who lived there 
two years. It is on an island in the 
Nkama river, about seventy miles from 
the sea, and faces the northwest. The 
island is a mile and a half in circum- 
ference. The river on the left is the 
Nkama, which comes down from the 
north, parts, flows round the island, and 
joins the Bakwe to the right of the pic- 
ture. The two houses at the extreme 
left belong to the native -village. The 
canoes drawn up on the beach are at the 
village landing. The house with one win- 
dow is the church and school-house, 
shaded by a beautiful wild orange-tree. 
The long low house with children in front 
is the mission-house. The trees around, 
with the feather-like leaves, are palm- 



LAST TALK. 151 

trees. The great branching tree on the 
edge of the bank is a fetish-tree, where 
the natives make offerings of rum, to 
bring trade to their town ; and formerly 
offered something besides rum, if we may 
judge from the two or three human skulls 
to be seen tucked away in the holes at 
the roots of the tree. ' The dark places 
of the earth are full of the habitations of 
cruelty.' 

'' The time when we were so happy 
at this place was when the Spirit of God 
came near to us, and, as we hoped, 
changed the hearts of several of our 
school children and some of the adult 
heathen. Our boys had been very per- 
verse, and disposed to ridicule every- 
thing serious, and at last were so bold 
in their wickedness as to plunder our 
fruit-trees, scattering the unripe fruit on 

the ground. Mr. P had faithfully 

instructed them and patiently borne with 



152 GABOON STORIES. 

them ; but his health being very poor, 
we questioned whether he ought not to 
send them away, rather than be worn 
out by them. While waiting a day or 
two, to feel well enough to have one 
more faithful talk with them, he conclu- 
ded to try them a little longer. So he 
told them, as they were seated after 
evening worship, what he had thought of 
doing, and made another effort to reach 
their consciences and to show them their 
sins. They said nothing at the time, but 
the next morning they came to us all 
together, their leader in mischief speak- 
ing for them, making humble confession 
of sin, and asking forgiveness. We were 
much encouraged at this; but still it 
took us by surprise to hear the voice of 
prayer in their house, and to see them 

come, one at a time, to ask Mr. P- 

how they could be saved. It was so 
unexpected, that we were suspicious that 



LAST TALK. 153 

tliey were deceiving us and were reallj^ 
engaged in some new wickedness ; but 
soon our mourning was turned into joy, 
and we praised Grod for souls born again. 
Five of the boys gave us very good rea- 
son to hope that they had given their 
hearts to Christ. Almost at the same 
time, a man in town, who had been 
particularly impudent and troublesome, 
asked abruptly one day how he could 

get a new heart. Mr. P was both 

sick and busy, and told him to come 
another time, and he would talk with 
him. The natives often pretended to 
be concerned about their souls, and 
made it a pretext for begging. But 
the next evening, after the house was 
closed for the night, we heard this man 
sobbing at the door and begging for 
admittance. He said his wicked heart 
gave him no rest night or day, and 

cried out in distress, ' What shall I do 
20 



154 GABOON STORIES. 

to be saved?' Mr. P seemed di- 
vinely assisted in holding up Christ cru- 
cified as his only refuge. 

From this time we doubted no lon- 
ger that the Spirit of God was with us, 
and day by day and evening by even- 
ing Mr. P told of Jesus, the only 

Saviour. I gained new views of the 
glorious plan of salvation, as I heard it 
explained in this barbarous language to 
this more barbarous people. Our house 
was filled every evening, and even the 
stupid, degraded old women asked how 
they might escape the wrath to come. 
The face of the weeping inquirer soon 
beamed with a new-born hope. Our 
boys built a small shelter in the woods 
where they could go and pray by them- 
selves, and thej^ kept the path to it well 
trodden. The change in their conduct 
was wonderful. We could only say, 
' The Lord hath done great things for 



LAST TALK. 155 

US, whereof we are glad.' Instead of 
the sound of unmeaning laughter, or 
empty talk, or angry disputing, we heard 
the voice of prayer and praise. We had 
often been distressed, when the boys 
went about on the river in the canoe, at^ 
their savage war-songs. But now they 
plied their paddles to the sound of hymns 
and Sabbath-school tunes. 

'' The affection which these young con- 
verts showed for us was like that of 
young children to their parents. Ma- 
ngila, the adult heathen from town, told 

Mr. P one day that he had been 

thinking how he could best show his 
gratitude for having the gospel brought 
to him. His raiment was all on his 
back, and he seldom had two full meals 
a day for two successive days. But the 
thoughts of the great blessing he had re- 
ceived so overpowered him, that, strong 
man as he was. he wept like a child. 



156 GABOON STOKIES. 

Do you not think we felt abundantly re- 
paid for what is called sacrifice and self- 
denial ? 

''Let me tell you a little of Henry 
Martyn Adams, who was a missionary 
to the savage Pangwes, fifteen miles be- 
yond Nengenenge. When he was alone 
among the Pangwes, with scarcely any 
comforts, taking his meals from a plant- 
ain-leaf, and having his clothes washed 
in the river by a boy, he remarked that 
he had much said to him before leaving 
home about the self-denials of mission- 
ary life, but he had not found them yet. 
He was so happy in his work, that these 
privations seemed to him of no conse- 
quence ; and yet, when he was at the 
seacoast in our pleasant mission-home, 
he enjoyed comforts and the society of 
friends as much as any one. 

^'He died at Nengenenge, August 13, 
1856. That was a long time ago; but I 



LAST TALK. 157 

have a clearer idea of the scene to-day 
than when, worn with grief and care, I 
WTote of it in my journal. His sickness 
was short. He came down the river 
from the Pangwes in his canoe on Sat- 
urday. The next day he did not rise, 
and we found he was very sick. The 
doctor was sent for, and everything pos- 
sible done for him ; but he suffered so 
little that he himself did not realize how 
sick he was, and he was talking of get- 
ting better and returning to his work. 
But on Tuesday noon he suddenly ex- 
claimed, ' Oh, the love of Jesus, the 
wonderful love of Jesus ! I am going, I 
am going to my Saviour ! What would 
become of me if my Judge was not also 
my Saviour ? Oh, it is beautiful, beau- 
tiful, beautiful! the sights I see, the 
sounds I hear ! Do n^t weep. Why do 
you weep for me ? I am sorry for you 
to be left with this great work to do 



158 GABOON STORIES. 

when you are so feeble. Oli that you 
were here with me ! I have been seek- 
ing for a token that this mission should 
live and prosper and prevail, and I have 
it. Rejoice! rejoice! rejoice! Africa 
will be redeemed. These hills will all 
sound forth the praises of Jesus. It is a 
blessed work. Do not be disheartened. 
I have been so happy in laboring here, 
and now I am so blest in receiving this 
great reward !' 

"The school children^and the natives 
crowded around, and he tried to tell 
them in their own language of the beau- 
tiful visions he beheld ; but the beaming 
smiles that passed over his face, and his 
arms extended upwards, told more than 
words. ' Oh, the pain — no, there is no 
pain — the Uiss of dying !^ he said. When 
some tea was given him to drink, he said, 
' Thank you, I shall soon drink at the 
fountain of the water of life ! He talked 



LAST TALK. 159 

ill this way for an hour and a half, and 
then became unconscious. But from this 
time till he died, on Wednesday noon, 
he did not wholly lose these glorious 
visions. 'I am happy, so happy !^ he 
would say. And his face was as the face 
of an angel. 

'^His grave on the island of Nenge- 
nenge was the first one made at an inte- 
rior station. 

''Sixteen months afterwards, Eev. H. 
P. Herrick, who was of like spirit, was 
laid to rest beside him. He, too, talked 
much of Jesus when he was dying, and 
repeated the hymn, 

" ' How sweet the name of Jesus sounds 
In a believer's ear. ' 

''He said, 'How can this people help 
loving the blessed Saviour? If they 
realized what he has done for them, 
they certainly would love him.' 

"These two precious graves 9,re a 



160 



GABOON STOllIES. 



pledge that the land is to come under 
the reign of our Redeemer. 

''My dear children, I cannot offer a 
higher wish for you than that, 

" ' Like theirs may be your last repose, 
Like theirs your last reward.' " 




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